Jan van Dalen, 36, of Florida, is still being treated in hospital after he had a minor heart attack, his stomach ulcer began to bleed, the wrong medication was prescribed for him and he started suffering from painful kidneys.

Van Dalen's drama began last week when he developed acute chest pains.

His wife Erica, 35, says he took pills for the pain and also because he wanted to avoid being admitted to hospital during the ongoing public service strike.

When it became worse, he could no longer avoid calling an ambulance.

Van Dalen says the doctor on duty, a woman whose name is being withheld for legal reasons, pricked herself with the hypodermic needle before she drew blood from him. She then used the same blood-contaminated needle to draw his blood.

'She often pricked herself'

He was upset when she tried to console him by saying that "he shouldn't worry, she had herself tested for Aids every three months and she wasn't HIV-positive".

She apparently also told him that she often pricked herself when working with hypodermic needles.

He had a mild heart attack three days later while in the hospital.

His condition grew worse over the last week as his ulcer started to bleed and another doctor who examined him found he was allergic to the medication which had been prescribed for him.

"Then she (the doctor who used the blood-tainted needle) said I shouldn't complain, because they shouldn't even be here (at the hospital) they should also be on strike" Van Dalen told Beeld by phone from his hospital bed.

By Thursday Van Dalen, who had not yet reported the incident to hospital authorities, was very concerned that he may have been infected.

"At this stage there's nothing that can give me a guarantee that I haven't been infected with a virus."

Hospital spokesperson Zukisa Pumané said the hospital encouraged all patients to report such incidents so that they could be investigated internally and the necessary steps taken.

Tripoli - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and visiting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe want African leaders to agree next month to unite Africa under one government to help it solve its own problems, state media said on Thursday.

The two men, both among the world's longest serving leaders, agreed in talks in Tripoli on Wednesday that the 53-nation African Union (AU) should be turned into an embryonic federal government at an AU heads of state summit in Ghana on July 1-2.

"They consulted on the upcoming African Union summit due to be held in Ghana, and in relation to this they emphasised the establishment of the African Union government," Libya's official Jana news agency said.

"This plan embodies the hopes and ambitions of the continent's people, and the only means for the continent's independence, political and economic freedom and progress and development," it added.

Gaddafi has long favoured the establishment of a United States of Africa as a means of ridding the continent of 800 million people of what he calls Western colonialism.

The project attracts emotional support from some in Africa since the idea of a federal United States of Africa was first promoted by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and pioneer of Pan-Africanism, but many doubt its practicality.

Other issues discussed

The topic is due to be debated at the Ghana gathering, which will take place 50 years after Ghana became the first black nation in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence.

Jana said the two leaders also discussed a number of other issues but did not elaborate.

There was no mention of energy ties between Zimbabwe and oil-producing Libya.

Zimbabwe had received oil from Libya under a $360m loan facility which the southern African country was meant to repay in part by supplying agricultural produce to Tripoli, but the deal collapsed in late 2002 after Harare failed to meet its obligations.

The facility, which covered 70% of Zimbabwe's fuel needs, had run for less than a year. Zimbabwe is in the midst of an economic crisis that has produced the world's highest inflation rate of above 3 700%, unemployment of around 80% and chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.

The documents were sourced by Edward Hammond from the Sunshine Project - an organisation that monitors U.S. research around biological weapons - through the Freedom of Information Act.

The 1994 proposal, from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory, was part of a drive by the Pentagon to develop new kinds of weapons that would be considered "non-lethal".

According to Hammon, the laboratories proposed funding $7.5 million towards a project that would research the idea of releasing a chemical among enemy forces that would cause soldiers to become irresistibly attracted to one another.

This, the proposal suggests, would lead to a breakdown in enemy units.

"One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior," reads the proposal.

Pentagon officials have confirmed that the proposal had been briefly considered but was then rejected. They claim that no such research is currently being undertaken.

U.S. gay rights organisations have said that the proposal is offensive and have scoffed at the idea that a chemical could make anyone gay; Research seems to overwhelmingly indicate that genetics play a primary role in determining sexual orientation.

Courtesy of www.mambaonline.com