LUSAKA, IRIN, 16 May 2005

A community-based project is mitigating the combined impact of widespread job losses and the HIV/AIDS epidemic on a former mining community in the central town of Kabwe, about 150 km north of the capital, Lusaka. The Chowa Railway Home-Based Care Project helps people living with HIV/AIDS adopt positive and healthy lifestyles in a township ravaged by the pandemic, while empowering the broader community. Chowa is a former mining community adjacent to a Zambia Railways township, both of which have suffered since the closure of the mine at the dawn of privatisation in the early 1990s. The community's plight was worsened by the job losses that followed the concessioning of Zambia railways in a public-private sector partnership last year. A number of other companies, whose operations had depended on the two firms, were forced to close down, leading to large-scale retrenchments, commented home-based care project coordinator Matildah Musonda.

Full Story

LUSAKA, SciDev.Net, 19 May 2005

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced today (19 May) it will spend US$35 million funding a new partnership that seeks to reduce deaths from malaria in Zambia by 75 per cent in three years. The project will try to establish national strategies for controlling malaria that can be applied elsewhere in Africa. The announcement followed one made by Gates earlier this week, pledging an additional US$250 million to the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, doubling the foundation's current funding commitment. Carlos Campbell, programme director of the new Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa (MACEPA), said that although the tools for fighting malaria are available, and concern among African health ministers is high, investment in malaria control remains low.

Full Story