LAGOS, 2 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - The proportion of fake and often deadly medicines in Nigeria has dropped from nearly 70 percent circulating in 2002 to less than 10 percent three years later, according to the country’s drug control agency.

The figures are preliminary results from a new government survey of the counterfeit drug trade, Dora Akunyili, head of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), told IRIN this week.

In Africa’s most populous country of some 126 million people, countless products have a prettily packaged and cheaper imitation for sale. Medicines are no exception.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the trade in counterfeit and sub-standard drugs is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually in Nigeria and about US $32 billion worldwide.

Year on year there has been a steady drop in the number of fake medicines on the street, according to the NAFDAC survey completed in August and sponsored by the WHO and the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID).

MONROVIA, 2 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Conservationists have moved hundreds of squatters out of Liberia's largest national park, putting an end to their slaughter of wildlife and illegal gold mining.

Alexander Pearl of Conservation International said about 500 people had been transported out of Sapo National Park in south-eastern Liberia during a five-day programme carried out in conjunction with UN peacekeepers and the government.

Rebel fighters, as well as civilians fleeing violence, began holing up in the park during the final months of Liberia's 14-year civil war that ended in August 2003.

ADDIS ABABA, 2 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - The number of reported polio cases in Ethiopia has risen sharply from two to 16 this year, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported.

The first two cases were children living close to the border with Sudan, where a polio outbreak was reported in December 2000.

"These were the first cases of polio in Ethiopia in four years - the last being in January 2001," WHO said in a statement released on Wednesday. "Both cases are wild polio virus type 1 and genetically linked to the polio virus circulating in neighbouring Sudan."

The additional 14 cases, WHO added, were detected in children aged between 8 months and 11 years in Tigray, Amhara and Oromiya regions of Ethiopia.

The agency urged Ethiopian authorities to strengthen routine immunisation of children, particularly in areas affected by the virus, and also called for coordinated anti-polio campaigns, saying the virus had spread along porous borders.

Stall holders in Cairo's dilapidated Bulaq Al-Dakrour market complain of slow trade, state workers in shabby Sharabiya say their wages won't support their families and in squalid Shubra Al-Khaima boys sift through rubbish for less than a $1 a day.

JOHANNESBURG, 1 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - In a surprise move cash-strapped Zimbabwe has paid off a substantial part of its arrears to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but economists are raising questions over the government's capacity to import enough maize to feed up to 4 million people facing food shortages.

Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono told the official Herald newspaper that the government had paid back US $120 million of the US $295 million it owed, saying the funds had been sourced from exporters and holders of free funds.

"This is a modest payment, meant to demonstrate our sincerity with respect to our international obligations," he said. The announcement came just days before a crucial 9 September meeting of the IMF's executive board to discuss Zimbabwe's possible expulsion over outstanding debt.

Harare-based economist Denis Nikisi told IRIN that although the government may have accrued some forex from exporters, he doubted that it had been able to raise a sufficient sum internally.