Violence is spreading in northern DRC, where hundreds of thousands have fled clashes between government forces and rebels, MSF said on Wednesday.

The high cost of drugs needed to treat Aids patients is putting the lives of thousands at risk, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Monday.

Islamist insurgents closed in on Somalia’s coastal capital after seizing another strategic town north of Mogadishu on Monday.

Somali gunmen freed two European aid workers on Tuesday without receiving a ransom after holding the pair hostage for nine days.

Gunmen have demanded a -million ransom for the release of three aid workers taken over the weekend, a local elder said on Monday.

Armed men have shot dead a Sudanese aid worker in Darfur in the latest of a string of attacks on international organisations in Sudan’s violent west.

The Zimbabwe cholera epidemic, which has now claimed about 3 400 lives, is only part of the country’s public health crisis, MSF said on Tuesday.

Medical charity Médecins sans Frontières has closed one of its clinics in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, due to insecurity, it said on Wednesday.

The Constitutional Court is expected to issue directions ”very soon” on the fate of people living in camps for refugees from xenophobic violence.

International charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Friday it had evacuated staff from troubled areas of Darfur.

Kenyan armed forces are accused of preventing aid workers from helping families caught between a brutal militia and an army crackdown.

Ethiopia’s Ogadeni rebels accused the regime in Addis Ababa on Friday of deliberately blocking international aid to their war-wracked region.

Kenyan troops fighting rebels in a remote area are killing and torturing civilians, a medical charity said on Tuesday.

More than 15-million children in sub-Saharan Africa will have lost one or both parents to Aids by 2010.

The Eastern Cape has some of the poorest districts in the country, according to Statistics South Africa