Government and civil society must develop a rights-based response to Covid-19, because epidemics are won by strengthening rights, not trampling on them
This week Switzerland will become ground zero for the future of health policy in Africa. The World Health Organisation’s intergovernmental working group is meeting in Geneva to discuss public health, medical innovation and intellectual property. Many participants are expected to express their support for efforts to undermine patent protections for drugs.
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/ 18 February 2008
United States President George Bush handed out hugs and bed nets to battle malaria in Tanzania’s rural north on Monday, saying the US is part of an international effort to provide enough mosquito netting to protect every child under five in the East African nation.
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/ 3 February 2008
An extraordinary array of contemporary art will go under the hammer next week for Red, the brand created by U2 star and activist Bono, to raise money to combat the Aids epidemic in Africa. The auction, on February 14, is the first of its kind and features mainly new works donated by more than 60 artists.
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/ 1 December 2007
Activists on Saturday sought to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on World Aids Day in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. The December 1 event is traditionally a time of grim stocktaking as Aids campaigners sound the alarm over the disease’s rampage through Africa.
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/ 30 November 2007
Statistics that indicated HIV/Aids numbers were lower than previously thought was cold comfort, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Friday. Speaking in Pretoria a day before World Aids Day, Tutu said that while the country might say things had improved, it was unacceptable that 600 people died of Aids everyday in South Africa.
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/ 29 November 2007
Overtaken as the largest funder of global HIV/Aids programmes, the World Bank is now focusing on easing the economic damage inflicted by the syndrome in Africa and finding ways of controlling its spread through better prevention, care and treatment. Global funding for HIV/Aids reached -billion in 2007 compared to ,6-billion available in 2001.
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/ 24 November 2007
Selina Akello sits in a clearing between the mud huts in her village. ”I will tell you anything,” she says. An older man passes within earshot, but she does not falter. This conversation would have been impossible a few years ago; Akello has the disease that used to be called ”slim” because people wasted away. Now it is called HIV/Aids.
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/ 22 November 2007
”If the United States wants to win a war, it ought to be the war on malaria,” says one of Africa’s best-known singing stars, Youssou N’Dour. The Senegalese superstar, who played at the Kennedy Centre in Washington on Monday, takes time to throw the spotlight over to malaria, which in Africa kills almost a million children a year.
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/ 13 November 2007
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has approved a grant of ,3-million to boost Kenya’s anti-HIV/Aids drive, the Health Ministry announced on Tuesday. The grant will finance programmes over the next five years, but an initial amount of ,1-million will be released in the first two years.
Hundreds of hard-line supporters of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe will stage a show of strength in support of the veteran president in the capital, Harare, on Wednesday, organisers said. ”The solidarity march is in support of President Robert Mugabe and his policies,” said Joseph Chinotimba of the war veterans’ association.