Rwanda is one of the sub-Saharan African nations most affected by the dreaded HIV/AIDS epidemic that is killing millions of African citizens. Of the eight million people in Rwanda, approximately 400,000 are affected with the virus. President Paul Kagame has made strides since his election in 2000 to helping those within his nation who have AIDS as well as working to prevent HIV infections. Kagame has been lauded by many in the international community for the strides he is taking in trying to combat this world-wide epidemic.

The Southern African nation of Botswana has the fastest growing economy in the world for more than 30 years. After attaining independence in 1966, the country went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to an upper income country. During the period from 1966 to 1999, the economic growth was about nine percent per year. Through the years, the government of Botswana has good financial policies and incurred low foreign debt. Most of the revenue in Botswana is derived from the diamond mines.

Africa can help Africa more than all of the other nations and organizations in the world. Although many international organizations have stepped in to assist the continent in recent years and have put in effort in trying to reduce poverty, funding school systems, instituting vaccination programs to combat various illnesses and providing food and clean water to those in blighted areas, Africa can help Africa simply by banding together as one nation to conquer all of the problems facing the continent today.

GABARONE, Botswana, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - Botswana, a country whose president once feared could be wiped off the map by AIDS, is living proof to other African countries that the pandemic should not be regarded as a death sentence.

After embarking on a programme to provide HIV sufferers with anti-retroviral drugs on a scale never before seen in Africa, only 8.5 percent of patients have died in the last five years, according to the southern African country's national AIDS coordinating agency (NACA).

GENEVA, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday.

'Each year, 100,000 children contract the AIDS virus in South Africa, and half of them die before the age of two,' UNICEF's representative in the country Macharia Kamau told journalists.

HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of child mortality in South Africa, and accounts for between 40 and 60 percent of all deaths nationwide, UNICEF said.

NAIROBI, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - More than half of Kenya's 102,000 children with HIV lack access to anti-retroviral drugs, a key setback in the fight against AIDS, the country's top physician said Monday.

Of the total figure, only 13,000 have access to life-prolonging drugs while more than 60,000 are in dire need of them, said Director of Medical Services James Nyikal while launching a Clinton Foundation-supported programme to put an additional 10,000 children under ARV therapy by year-end.

DUBAI, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - A New York anti-AIDS campaigner said on Sunday he plans to make a second attempt to row across the Atlantic starting on World AIDS Day on December 1 to raise global awareness about the killer disease.

'I have so far collected close to 10,000 dollars in America' of the 100,000 dollars needed for the 12,900-kilometre (8,000-mile) voyage from Senegal's Goree Island to New York, Victor Mooney, 42, said in the United Arab Emirates.

His first attempt to complete the feat in May 2006 failed when his hand-made boat sank.

BANGKOK, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Married people accounted for more than 40 percent of all new cases of HIV/AIDS in Thailand last year, the country's health ministry said Thursday, despite an overall decrease in infections.

About 7,000 married people reported that they had HIV/AIDS in 2006, from a total of 17,000 new cases, according to the latest survey by the ministry's disease control department.

CAPE TOWN, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Research into a vaccine for AIDS, which is devastating in parts of southern Africa, got a boost following a 100 million dollar (70.6 million euro) initiative launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The money, to be disbursed in grants over five years, beginning from 2008, will promote research into diseases afflicting poor countries, like AIDS and malaria, said a statement on the Foundation's website on Wednesday after a meeting of global health researchers in Cape Town, South Africa.

LISBON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Palestinian-born doctor Ashraf Juma Hajjuj is slowly learning to live again after 'nine years of my life were destroyed' in a Libyan jail, where he was tortured and sexually abused.

Hajjuj, who was detained in prison for eight-and-a-half years with five Bulgarian medics on charges of infecting more than 400 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in Benghazi, says the wasted years were a 'black hole.'