KAMPALA, 26 October 2009 (IRIN) - Seventeen countries signed the African Union convention on internally displaced persons (IDPs) after years of preparation culminated in a week of meetings in the Ugandan capital but a lot more hard work remains before it becomes effective, according to observers.
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JOHANNESBURG, 26 October 2009 (PlusNews) - The billions of donor dollars spent on combating HIV/AIDS in the last decade, often at the expense of other fatal diseases, have done little to strengthen weak national health systems, some global health experts argue.
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DONDO, 27 October 2009 (IRIN) - Mozambique's effort to become the first of the world's major mine-contaminated countries to be declared mine-free is faltering on the home straight.
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KAMPALA, 27 October 2009 (IRIN) - The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa is a comprehensive document that will, if ratified, fill a void in international humanitarian law, say experts.
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MBABANE, 27 October 2009 (PlusNews) - Thandi Xaba, 23, an aspiring actress living with HIV, belongs to an itinerant theatrical group in Swaziland who perform plays dealing with HIV/AIDS, often spiced with humour to engage the rural audience who sit beneath trees to watch the shows.
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NAIROBI, 27 October 2009 (PlusNews) - Replacing manual data with electronic health records would significantly improve the quality of care and enable African HIV treatment programmes to be scaled up more efficiently, say the authors of a new article on the subject.
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HARARE, 27 October 2009 (IRIN) - Violence and intimidation against members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) increased sharply within days of the party "disengaging" from Zimbabwe's unity government, MDC spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka told IRIN.
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MIDRAND, 27 October 2009 (IRIN) - Disaster risk reduction as a tool for climate change adaptation is a "technical mouthful" said Rachel Shebesh, chair of the African Parliamentarian Initiative for Climate Risk Reduction.
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BULAWAYO, 28 October 2009 (IRIN) - The use of handmade bricks is revolutionizing housing in Chinhoyi, 120km north of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, where housing estates built by poor people have mushroomed in a development that has caught the attention of the housing ministry.
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NAIROBI, 29 October 2009 (PlusNews) - Malawi's successful use of a well-known tuberculosis (TB) treatment system to scale up antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV could improve chronic disease management in other African nations, experts say.
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DAKAR, 29 October 2009 (IRIN) - To detect malaria people might soon be able to chew a stick of gum and swipe it over a magnet or scan a finger with ultra-far infrared light. Neither test requires a blood sample.
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JOHANNESBURG, 29 October 2009 (IRIN) - An African international agreement has opened the door to a debate on the rights and protection of people displaced by natural disasters, with a nod to migration as a result of climate change.
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WINDHOEK, 30 October 2009 (PlusNews) - In Onamutenya village, northern Namibia, the Shigwedha household leaves their homestead at the crack of dawn to make the monthly four-hour walk to fetch antiretroviral (ARV) medication from the local clinic.
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NAIROBI, 30 October 2009 (PlusNews) - The use of mid-level health workers rather than doctors to prescribe antiretroviral treatment (ART), a strategy called task-shifting, has enabled Mozambique to triple the number of facilities providing medication within six months, according to a new study.
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