Samir Amin

The national health department has signed off new HIV treatment guidelines, bringing South Africa in line with international best practice and removing a drug responsible for a wide range of side effects. The new guidelines were finally signed off last week after a meeting last November with the provinces, donors, HIV clinicians and other HIV experts.

The chance of becoming pregnant not only increased over four years of antiretroviral treatment, but was almost 80% higher for HIV-infected women who began antiretroviral therapy than for HIV-infected women not on treatment enrolled in the Mother-to-Child Transmission Plus (MTCT Plus)-Initiative in seven sub-Saharan countries, report Landon Myer and colleagues in a study published in the February online edition of PLoS Medicine.

Support for regional trade is one of the cornerstones of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But the focus has been on large scale trade in goods and services, ignoring one important group trading throughout the region.

Eighteen-year-old David Kimenyi* is sure he infected his girlfriend with HIV. They had unprotected sex many times, even after he discovered he was HIV-positive. "I am afraid that I would have infected my girlfriend with HIV/AIDS," he said.

A number of South African Methodists are angry and upset about the ruling that a well-liked minister must be "defrocked" because of her gay marriage. Reverend Ecclesia de Lange of Cape Town married her life partner in December and was suspended by the church in January.

Western Kenya's Lugari district has long been a maize-growing area. But worsening drought, believed linked to climate change, has made the region's once-reliable staple an increasing risk. "When I planted maize, the rains disappeared when the maize had reached knee height. The whole farm dried up and I had nothing for food. My children could not go to school because I relied on maize as a cash crop also," said Dan Asembo Shaban, a farmer and a father of five.

Malaria researchers in Benin say they may have found a replacement for DDT in areas where mosquitoes are resistant to common insecticides. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides is a major part of malaria control. But worries over toxicity and environmental persistence have led to calls for DDT to be phased out, and mosquitoes are growing resistant to widely used pyrethroid insecticides. Alternatives are expensive and short-lived.

Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi.

By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.

Journalistes en Danger (JED) has praise as well as concerns for a new media law passed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 31 December 2009. The law covers the "composition, powers, organisation and functioning" of the broadcasting and communication council (Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel et de la communication, CSAC).The entire text of the law was read aloud on national radio on 2 January 2010 by an advisor to the President.

More than 100 human rights advocates, dissidents and government officials will gather in Washington, DC February 17-19 for a groundbreaking summit to tackle global challenges to fundamental freedoms of expression and association.

Education systems in many of the world's poorest countries are now experiencing the aftershock of the global economic downturn. The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, released on 19 January, argues that the crisis could create a lost generation of children whose life chances will have been irreparably damaged by a failure to protect their right to education.

Sandhya Boygah considers herself a victim of male-dominated politics. In 2007, she was asked by her party, the ruling Labour Party, to step aside and allow a man to stand for the elected post she sought.

Even though the global economy appeared to start growing again during the closing months of 2009, labour markets showed little sign of improving. The number of unemployed persons is estimated at 212 million in 2009, representing an increase of almost 34 million over the number of unemployed in 2007, with the bulk of this increase occurred in 2009.

This report sets out to provide a fresh analysis of current thinking and practice about the role of media in relation to governance outcomes. Specifically, the aim was to discover from first principles - and without attempting to prove any particular thesis - what current thinking about media and governance is among a number of high level thinkers and policy makers from the governance, media and development communities.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Congo-Brazzaville has said it is expecting more displaced people to pour in from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The UNHCR said that more than 120,000 refugees are already crammed into camps in Congo-Brazzaville and Central African Republic.

Transparency International (TI), the global leader in the fight against corruption, will release Africa Education Watch: Good Governance Lessons for Primary Education, a new report on education in seven African countries on 23 February. Despite ten years of international efforts to provide universal basic education, the report shows that poor management and lack of training is compromising the delivery of quality basic education. The report documents a broad range of problems, from deficient or non-existent accounting systems to illegal fees.

Rwandan health authorities have embarked on a campaign to sensitize the country's prisoners - considered high risk for HIV – on how to protect themselves from contracting and transmitting the virus.

A new Zimbabwean short film on multiple concurrent sexual partnerships (MCPs) runs for just 24 minutes, but the producers are hoping that its message will last much longer. The film, "Big House, Small House" is the latest offering from the OneLove Campaign, which works to reduce HIV prevalence and MCPs in 10 southern African countries. The title refers to the colloquial expression "small house", used to denote long-term, illicit sexual relationships in Zimbabwe.