By systematically refusing to answer questions about abuses and dispossession in Sudan and Ethiopia the oil giant Lundin Petroleum and Sweden's minister for foreign affairs Carl Bildt have found a winning strategy, writes Kerstin Lundell, author of the award winning 'Business in Blood and Oil: Lundin Petroleum in Africa'. 'Based on earlier experiences, we find it's not of a constructive nature to comment on unsubstantiated claims about Lundin Petroleum and the corporation's business.' That's all the answer I've received for all the questions I've asked for the past four years about the company's knowledge of or involvement with all the events - the murders, the burning of entire villages - in Sudan and Ethiopia that I've encountered as I collected material for my book 'Business in Blood and Oil' and for articles in Process Nordic magazine.

An estimated six per cent of Kenyan couples - about 344,000 - are HIV discordant, while a further 22 per cent of couples know the HIV status of their sexual partners. Although Kenya has national guidelines for promoting prevention among people living with HIV, implementing them has proved to be a challenge. Dr Charles Okal, the AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Coordinator for Nyanza Province says providing services for discordant couples is made difficult by the fact that testing is the only way to find them, yet couples rarely turn out for testing together.

Following the cyclone and floods that ravaged Quelimane town and its outskirts, health officials have raised concern over the possibilities of cholera, malaria and diarrhoeal outbreak. Tropical Cyclone Funso swept across the coastal areas of Zambezia province leaving trail of destruction to property and crops. Thousands of people were left homeless among them elderly, child-headed families and the sick. For the local health authorities in Quelimane, it is the destruction of water and sanitation facilities and puddles of water scattered around the affected communities which are of major concern.

Burkina Faso's Network for Access to Essential Medicines (RAME) has called on the Burkinabè government to increase the budget allocation to the health sector to avoid interruptions to AIDS treatment. Despite an emergency plan announced in January, which will see the government spend around one billion CFA francs - two million dollars - to procure AIDS drugs in this West African country, patients and civil society groups are demanding permanent measures to ensure the availability of anti- retrovirals and reagents.