The World Health Organisation (WHO) called for an immediate yellow fever vaccination campaign in the Burkinabe city of Bobo Dioulasso on Wednesday, saying 89 suspected cases of the mosquito-borne disease had been recorded there so far this year and six of those people had died.

An apparent decline in the number of circumcision operations carried out on young women in Burkina Faso masks a growing trend to circumcise younger and younger girls, according to a new survey by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Burkina based National Committee Against the Practice of Circumcision (CNLPE).

Meningitis has killed more than 800 people in the impoverished West African country of Burkina Faso since the start of the year, health officials said on Monday, double the death toll given two months ago. Like its neighbours in Africa's "meningitis belt" stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east, the landlocked country is often struck by outbreaks of the disease in the early months of the year.

The HIV infection rate in Burkina Faso has declined sharply over the past year, according to the country's latest sentinel survey, which is based on the voluntary testing of pregnant women at ante-natal clinics. The 2004 survey, published last Thursday, estimated that 4.2% of Burkinabe were infected with the HIV virus. That represented a sharp fall from the 6.5% HIV prevalence rate registered by the 2003 sentinel survey, and a peak of 7.2 percent in 1997.