Mozambique's National Council for the Fight Against AIDS (CNCS) has spent less than 40 percent of the funds allocated to HIV/AIDS activities in the country in 2004. According to the local news agency, AIM, the CNCS had planned programmes costing US $17.7 million, but only $6.5 million was disbursed and used, leaving projects planned by civil society and the public sector in the lurch.
Equity in Health
Mozambique National AIDS council spent less than 40 percent of budget
Mozambique tests cholera vaccine
Mozambique has launched a widespread vaccination campaign against cholera to reduce the impact of the water-borne disease in the southern African state, the government said on Monday. "We want to check whether the use of this vaccine, already used by individual European travellers, can be effective in an epidemic situation," Health Minister Fransciso Songane told a news conference.
Mozambique, Malawi Accept GM Food As Hunger Bites
Two more southern African countries, Malawi and Mozambique, have followed Zimbabwe's example and have accepted genetically modified (GM) food as starvation takes its toll in the region. President Mugabe, who earlier this year had said he would not allow "his people" to consume GM food, as it was feared to cause negative reactions in human beings, made a U-turn last month by announcing that the country would begin consuming GMs because of the prevalent food crisis.
Mozambique/South Africa sign health deal
Mozambique and South Africa are to sign a health cooperation agreement, allowing the exchange of knowledge on diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido and his South African counterpart, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, met in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, to finalise details of the agreement.
MOZAMBIQUE: Living positively
People living with HIV/AIDS (PWAs) in Mozambique are learning how to live longer and more productive lives under a new programme currently being rolled out in the country. The Vida Positiva/Positive Living programme is a "social education" project targeting those infected and affected by the disease, national coordinator for Vida Positiva, Nyeleti Mondlane, told PlusNews.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29448
mozambique: msf launches arv pilot plan
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) plans to launch a five-year pilot programme in collaboration with the Mozambican government to provide free antiretrovirals (ARVs) to a selected group of HIV-positive people in the northern province of Tete and in the capital, Maputo. The programme, to be introduced before the end of December, would begin with 350 people in Maputo and 350 in Tete during the first year, and gradually increase to 1,500 people by the end of the second year. The MSF programme follows an announcement last month that an Indian manufacturing company, approved by the UN's World Health Organisation, would begin supplying Mozambican pharmacies with cheap generic ARVs.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29438
MOZAMBIQUE: PlusNews Country Profile
UNAIDS/WHO Epidemiological Fact sheets on HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.
Mozambique: Unions Concentrate On HIV/Aids for May Day
Mozambique's main trade union federation, the OTM, launched a week of activities leading up to International Workers Day, 1 May, under the theme "Mozambican workers in the fight against HIV/AIDS." The OTM general secretary, Joaquim Fanheiro, said at a Maputo press conference that this theme was chosen taking into account the realisation that workers should be in the forefront of this fight, because it is workers who fall ill and die of AIDS, it is their children who become orphans, and it is their families who suffer.
Much to be done: can water supply and sanitation targets be met?
The 1990 World Summit for Children pledged to provide universal access to safe water by the end of the century. Why then do 2.2 million people still die each year from preventable diseases associated with a lack of safe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene?
Multi-drug resistant malaria swiftly on the rise
Africa is facing a public health disaster in the form of multi-drug resistant malaria. People infected with malaria in eastern, central and southern Africa are rapidly becoming resistant to one of the most affordable and commonly used anti-malaria drugs, sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP). Previously, a number of safe and cheap drugs including SP have kept down the number of deaths and people suffering from severe ill health caused by malaria. But there are ominous predictions that disaster looms – unless governments are willing to reconsider their treatment regime.