A country's policy on healthcare financing can help or hinder access to services by poor people. How can different approaches to resource allocation enable poor people to access essential health services? A report from the UK Department for International Development's Health Systems Resource Centre presents lessons from Cambodia, South Africa and Uganda.

Facing imminent military defeat, former Madagascan president Didier Ratsiraka on Tuesday called for an internationally guaranteed ceasefire, sparking speculation that the reign of one of Africa's longest rulers has finally come to an end.

Zambia has joined Zimbabwe in expressing concern over accepting genetically modified (GM) food aid, while the country struggles to overcome food shortages threatening over two million people.

It is uncertain what the future holds for Zimbabwe. Although most people discuss politics more freely than in the past, and whilst a significant number of Zimbabweans have expressed concern with the election result, there are no indications of how and where this discontent will be channelled. There are adjourned MDC-Zanu-PF talks about a government of national unity, and ‘smart sanctions’ as issues remain unresolved. However, civil society organisations are agreed that before a re-run there should be constitutional and electoral reforms, or at a minimum, pre-conditions conducive for holding a free and fair election.

The Open Society Institute (OSI) is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that develops and implements a range of programs in civil society, education, media, public health and human and women's rights, as well as social, legal, and economic reform. The Senior Legal Officer will work in cooperation with the International Legal Program's offices in New York and Budapest, OSI's national foundation in South Africa (OSF-SA), and its regional foundations in Southern and West Africa (OSISA and OSIWA).

Oxfam GB are looking to recruit a Project Manager who will review the current public health situation of IDPs & develop a proposal. The proposal is expected to address the public health concerns of IDPs as well as build the capacity of local and national governments. This programme will fit into the wider national level capacity enhancment plan in emergency preparedness & response.

CU has designed a multi-strategy Emergency & Rehabilitation Plan (ERP) that encompasses relief food distribution, supplementary feeding to malnourished children, winter cropping, basic food security related rehabilitation & recovery activities, etc. Therefore, this new & challenging Programme Co-ordinator position has been created to further develop & implement the ERP.

The International Rescue Committee seeks a SARC Program Manager for its Sierra Leone Program. The SARC (Sexual Assault Referral Center) project is an innovative addition to IRC's SGBV program in Sierra Leone. The purpose of the SARC will be to provide consistent, appropriate, timely and accessible medical and psychosocial services to survivors and raise awareness of gender based violence and legislative and community action to combat it.

The postholder will develop and manage CIIR’s Southern Africa programme with an operational focus on Namibia and Zimbabwe but with a wider sub-regional outlook. You will increase the programmes effectiveness and impact through advocacy and skillsharing in three prioritised areas: HIV/AIDS, Building Just Societies and Peace and Conflict. You will work constructively with local partner organisations and with marginalised groups, commercial farm workers and the San people.

Another political skirmish between coalition partners governing KwaZuluNatal has emerged, this time with the African National Congress (ANC) accusing the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of "continued" abuse of government facilities. The ANC alleged that the IFP had "for too long" treated the use of government structures and buildings in the province "as its own personal property".

The national property watchdog, the Estate Agency Affairs Board, has come out strongly against racism in the industry, following complaints from estate agents. CEO Stanley Moshidi said the industry's code of conduct was being flouted, and incidents of racist behaviour within the workplace were becoming more prevalent.

Since the ending of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, activists have been encouraged to divert their energies into other campaigns - around trade, aid and Aids. Western development and finance ministers and IMF staff have breathed a sigh of relief, pleased that the "crude analysis" of the debt campaigners has been replaced by debates about trade. It is of course vital to highlight the double standards of western governments; and to pressurise these governments to reverse trade injustice, increase aid and fight Aids. But it takes a tragedy like the one unfolding in Malawi to remind us that debt remains the very lynchpin of global economic injustice.

Ten-year-old Tanzanian children are involved in mining activities including the washing of rocks and the collecting and carrying of crushed rock that exposes them to serious health risks, according to new research.

Coordinator of a women rights group, Seodi White, is a busy lawyer. When she is not giving free legal advice to women, she is busy conducting human rights education programmes for them. White is one of the few female lawyers in Malawi.

Primaries organised by Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday and Tuesday to choose candidates for next month’s local council elections were marred by factional violence. At least two people died and dozens of others were injured.

WWF has recognized the efforts of two outstanding women for their role in conservation at an awards ceremony held last week in Washington, DC. Sushila Nepali of Nepal and Patricia Skyer of Namibia were selected to receive this year's awards for their conservation work in their native countries.

SciDev.Net is holding a four-day workshop in Entebbe, Uganda between 29 September and 3 October on Science Communication for Sustainable Development. It will bring together a group of scientists, public relations officers, print and radio/TV journalists along with professionals from academies of science, government departments, science and technology policy institutions and non-governmental organisations.

Uganda has been selected as one of the 12 countries to benefit from grants from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to fight HIV/AIDS.

There is probably no park where authorities and communities are not at loggerheads. Wild animals, which raid the villager's crops are always provoking conflict. However, Kibaale National Park in Western Uganda has made a giant leap to overcome the crop raiders.

A new pro-active approach to funding poverty relief and community development projects will be unveiled by the National Development Agency (NDA) at a roadshow in Umtata. The roadshow aims to brief local government, NGOs and community organisations on the NDA's new approach that seeks to pro-actively fund community projects instead of waiting for applications.

A North West primary school was given a construction site to rebuild its school on Wednesday, at a soil turning ceremony in Letlhabile township near Brits. Uthingo yielded to the call by former President Nelson Mandela to construct a school for the Osaletseng Primary School to the tune of R2.5 million.

The United States has donated US $25,000 to restore one of Ethiopia’s most important religious temples. The restoring the sandstone shrine to its former glory might lead to a boost in tourism for the area. The pre-Christian temple, which dates back to 5th century BC, is now in ruins, but is the only remains of the former capital, which is close to Axum – Ethiopia’s holiest city.

RSF has expressed serious concern after the arrest of Hassan Bility, editor-in-chief of the private weekly "The Analyst". "The newspaper is well known for its highly critical attitude towards President Charles Taylor, and we hope that the accusation of 'plotting against the President' is not a pretext for silencing a journalist who is very critical of those in power," said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to Liberian Information Minister Reginald Goodridge. "We are concerned that this may be a witch hunt against journalists who criticise government policies," he added.

To ensure that ICTs assume prominence in the mass media, the Ghana Institute of Information Technology (GIIT), in association with the International Institute of ICT Journalism, with support from the Ghana Journalists Association, is organizing the first National Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) seminar for Journalists working in Ghana. This landmark event will take place on 18th July 2002 at Busy Internet, to be attended by 60 selected members of the Ghana Journalists Association.

Only 30,000 people out of almost 30 million now living with the death sentence of HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa are being given the drugs that keep infected men and women alive, well and working in Britain, in spite of the promises of help from rich nations over the past two years. As a devastating report from UNaids on the scale of the epidemic and its human and economic cost was published this week, it became clear that a vast gulf still exists between those who will die in the absence of treatment and those whose lives can be indefinitely prolonged by modern medicine.

At the same time the Treatment Action Campaign (Tac) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) were holding a massive people's conference in Durban to fight HIV/Aids last week, Thabo Mbeki begged for increased commitments for Africa from G-8 leaders in Kananaskis, Canada.

Included amongst those commitments is the UN Global Fund, which according to Kofi Annan should logically reach $10 billion annually to meet Third World demands for inexpensive medicine, more health workers and improved facilities. But the Fund has received less than a tenth of that money, after George W. Bush denied a congressional allocation of $700 million in May.

Mbeki's search for aid, debt relief and investment resulted in "recycled peanuts," according to informed commentators. Mbeki and other African leaders were reduced to expressing "satisfaction" over their 90-minute appearance before Bush and his Northern cronies, which is a rhetorical measure of power imbalances and global inequity.

Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development was bound to attract scepticism, particularly insofar as its corporate-friendly tone and content compels venal government elites across the continent to make themselves attractive for new investment.

Energised activists from the Tac/Cosatu conference will now have to raise the opposite question: how Africa-friendly are multinational corporations, particularly when so many African workers are HIV+, and when the leading corporations turn their back on anti-retroviral treatments?

Done properly, treatments would potentially transform the disease from inexorably fatal into a chronic illness such as diabetes, as has happened in much of the wealthier West.

But thanks to unemployment above 40%--if one counts those who have given up
trying to find a job under prevailing conditions-international and local firms are faced with a terrible option: replace sick workers with desperate, unemployed people instead of providing them treatment.

Perhaps the ethical challenge was expressed most eloquently by financier George Soros, who was asked about treating HIV+ South Africans by an SABC journalist in April. He answered, `I think to provide treatment to the bulk of the people is just not feasible. I think to provide treatment for instance to qualified workers actually saves money, actually saves money for companies.'

The interviewer responded, `Aren't you uncomfortable to talk in a way that is a kind of death sentence to those who we can't afford to treat?' Replied Soros, `I think the cost of providing actual treatment to everyone at the present... I don't think it's realistic. It's not achievable.'

In a more systematic way, the same conclusion was reached after a year of study at Africa's largest company, Anglo American Corporation. Anglo has 160,000 employees, of whom 21% are HIV+. After the pharmaceutical industry withdrew its lawsuit against Pretoria's potential use of imported generic drugs in April 2001, the company announced it would provide anti-retroviral medicines to its workforce, which meant literally tens of thousands of lives could be saved in the short term.

In June 2001, the Financial Times reported that`treatment of [Anglo's]employees with anti-retrovirals can be cheaper than the costs incurred by leaving them untreated.' In August, Anglo's vice president for medicine, Brian Brink, announced a strategy which 'involved offering wellness programmes, including access to anti-retroviral treatment.'

According to one press report, `The company believed that the cost of its programmes would eventually be outweighed by the benefits it received in gradual gains in productivity, [Brink] concluded. Although it was indeed a risky strategy, it was the only one Anglo could pursue in the face of such
human suffering.'

Then last October, Anglo simply retracted its promise, once cost-benefit analysis showed that 146,000 of those workers just weren't worth saving. According to the FT, Brink `said the company's 14,000 senior staff would receive anti-retroviral treatment as part of their medical insurance, but that the provision of drug treatment for lower income employees was too expensive.'

Brink explained the criteria for the fatal analysis: '[Anti-retrovirals]could save on absenteeism and improved productivity. The saving you achieve can be substantial, but we really don't know how it will stack up. We feel that the cost will be greater than the saving.'

His callous feeling became official policy a few months ago. As the Wall Street Journal recorded on April 16, `In a controversial move that could have wide ramifications for how companies in poor countries handle Aids, mining giant Anglo American PLC has put on hold a feasibility study to provide Aids drugs to its African work force, according to people familiar with the situation. When it disclosed its plans for the study a year ago, Anglo garnered wide praise because it was one of the first major corporations to reveal measures aimed at treating Aids cases among its rank-and-file African employees.'

A month later, South Africa's most eloquent pro-corporate commentator, Ken Owen, defended the merits of Anglo's policy in a Business Day column: `I am sceptical about most doomsday economic scenarios generated by the Aids epidemic... For the rest of this decade, at least, the lost workers will be quite readily replaceable from the millions of unemployed, and society will adjust in a myriad of ways to labour shortages. For example, a million domestic workers constitute a reserve pool of labour that can be drawn into
industry.'

Where does this display of corporate arrogance-bordering on culpable homicide--leave the treatment-activist movement? Will the April 2001 victory over Big Pharma and the expected Constitutional Court ruling against Mbeki on access to drugs for pregnant HIV-positive women allow HIV/Aids activists to turn, with their labour and other international solidarity allies, against capital?

The answer may lie in changing the terms of costs and benefits, by making firms socially liable-even if merely through old-fashioned protest--for killing their workers through malign medical-insurance neglect. With Anglo attempting to shine at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August, opportunities abound for global humiliation of the genocidal tendencies at these mega-wealthy multinational corporations.

(Wits University political economy professor Patrick Bond is editor of 'Fanon's Warning', a new book critical of Nepad, published by Africa World Press and the Alternative Information and Development Centre.)

The African Union must not be just a modified OAU. It must be a union of peoples and not a union of states and the parliament, for instance, should play a major role. Member states will have to accept the transfer to the Union of some of their prerogatives. Common policies will have to be put in place on priority questions such as reinforcing continental peace and security, the integration of African economies, the free movement of persons, goods and capital, food security, the fight against poverty, the coordination of
different initiatives in the realm of development, notably in trade, the environment, and the fight against pandemics, without forgetting external debt.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last Friday urged the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to release five abducted nurses and an ambulance belonging to their NGO, MERCI. LURD rebels attacked Sinje refugee camp, 80 km northwest of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, last Thursday, taking away the nurses and causing Sierra Leonean refugees and displaced Liberians to flee.

Ebonyi State in south-eastern Nigeria should not endorse the activities of vigilante groups, Human Rights Watch and the Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) has said. The human rights groups were responding to recent reports that the governor of Ebonyi, Sam Egwu, was planning to introduce the vigilante group, known as the Bakassi Boys, into his state and to sign a law establishing them there. The Bakassi Boys have been responsible for numerous human rights abuses in the neighboring states of southeastern Nigeria where they operate, including extrajudicial killings, public burnings, mutilations, torture, and unlawful detentions.

Talks on the political crisis in Madagascar must address the deteriorating human rights situation, Amnesty International says. "The leaders of Madagascar and the international community must condemn the ongoing human rights abuses and take a firm stance on holding those responsible to account," the organization said.

Benin police last Wednesday stopped a protest march planned in Cotonou by the country's Human Rights League (LDH), against alleged human rights violations in the country, witnesses said. The estimated 40 security men armed with tear gas canisters and truncheons, stormed the Cotonou Labour Office Square where the demonstrators had assembled for the march.

Fraud and corruption cases are on the increase in East Africa, threatening to undo economic gains made by the region, says a new report.

The recent development of a treatment for leishmaniasis, also known as black fever, a disease that each year afflicts some 500,000 people globally and kills at least 60,000, offers a ray of hope for thousands of Sudanese who die each year from the disease for lack of treatment.

Despite continuing fighting in parts of Burundi, the vaccination campaign launched last week was "moving forward as planned", Susanna Campbell, the communications officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says.

Of the total number of children under the age of 15 who had lost their mothers or both parents to AIDS by 2000, 90% were in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of those infected with HIV are people in their economically active stages of life (15-49). It is grandparents who have to care for their sick or HIV-infected children and raise and support their orphaned grandchildren. In most cases, they provide this care with little or no state or other support.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has slammed his predecessor Frederick Chiluba, accusing him of granting ''outrageous'' benefits to retiring military heads three days before December general elections.

Cameroon's President Paul Biya has sacked his interior minister after having to postpone parliamentary and municipal elections, which were scheduled to start on Sunday. Ferdinand Koungou Edima was accused of failing to prepare the vote properly after the state-run printing press had not finished producing the ballots.

Women must seize the opportunity of equality and fight for their rights, the Ethiopian government urged on Monday. Without their full participation in society the country could never attain rapid and sustained development, the information ministry declared in a statement.

The number of children orphaned byAIDS has increased from 1.7 million in 2000 to 2 million this year despite a decline in the rate of infection, the English daily Monitor reported on Monday.

Two wildlife organisations have come out in support of a government bid to be allowed to sell ivory stocks on an annual basis. The Namibia Nature Foundation's Project Co-ordinator, Nils Odendaal, told The Namibian that they backed the request 100 per cent. Namibia is home to approximately 10 000 elephants and has about 40 tonnes of ivory stockpiled. Namibia's elephant population is on Cites' Appendix II, which allows one-off sales of ivory but not annual quotas.

The Sudanese government has said it will send a letter to US President George W. Bush to clarify its position after his call last Thursday, 20 June, on Khartoum to demonstrate more serious commitment to ending the Sudanese civil war. Minister for External Relations Mustafa Uthman Isma'il said the government welcomed without reservations Bush's call for an end to the war, but was displeased that he had not touched on the need for the other warring party - the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) - to do the same.

Angola took advantage of last Thursday's World Refugee Day to express its commitment to gradually solve the dramatic situation facing thousands of its citizens, particularly children and women living in refugee camps.

The objective of Agenda 21, the strategy document adopted at the 1992 Rio Summit, was to maximise economic and social welfare without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. But Will Alexander of the University of Pretoria, South Africa argues that this is a utopian view, and that there should be no environmental impediments to the maximisation of economic and social welfare. He calls for multidisciplinary approaches to problems, and warns against the imposition of northern hemisphere solutions to Africa problems. This is critical, he says, in the light of the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development.

There has been much talk of an ageing crisis in Europe, but the real crisis is in Africa. A combination of high fertility, rising longevity, civil war and HIV/AIDS lies behind a unique transformation of the demographic structure in which, unlike any other regions in the world, falling life expectancy at birth is associated with rising life expectancy at later ages.

Despite the Doha declaration of November 2001, the failure to start a new round of global trade negotiations at Seattle in December 1999 and the hostility of protesters to the trade liberalisation process and growing global economic and social disparities was a wake-up call for the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The ambitious goal of this ground-breaking book is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of liberalised world trade, in particular in the agricultural sector, and to investigate to what extent the current WTO agreements provide the necessary fail-safe devices to react to trade-related negative impacts on sustainability, environmental protection and food security. The background and interrelationship between the WTO, the tenets of sustainable development and the unique features of the agriculture and forestry sectors are explored, and conclusions regarding the deficits of the world trade system and its conflicts with basic societal goals—such as sustainability—are drawn.

Twelve prisoners were hung in Sudan in the closing days of May and a further 15 prisoners have been sentenced to death and are awaiting execution, according to the World Organisation Against Torture, whose international secretariat urgently requests those opposed to the death penalty to write to the Sudanese authorities and protest against the killings.

Although efforts are being made to integrate STI services into family planning clinics in Zambia, these efforts need reinforcement. The educational levels of both providers and their clients may be barriers to a successful transfer of STI prevention information during client-provider interactions.