Forced HIV testing of sex workers violates their rights to privacy and dignity, can lead to stigma, discrimination and violence, and produces bad public health outcomes.

Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations, has made significant progress in improving the survival of newborns and is on track to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goal number four - to reduce the deaths of children up to the age of five by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. This is according to a new report released by Save the Children, which identifies how newborn infants have been overlooked by global efforts intent on improving child and maternal health. While newborns make up 40 percent of child deaths annually, they receive just six percent of development aid. According to the report, Malawi has the highest rate of pre-term births in the world (18 per cent). Roughly a third of all newborn deaths are due to complications that arise from such births.

As a treatment provider for tens of thousands of HIV+ people across the globe, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says it is deeply concerned about the proposal outlined in the editorial piece 'ARV Programme Not Free Entitlement for Those Affording' which appeared in The Herald 15 May 2012 issue. The article proposes to shift the financial burden of purchasing antiretroviral medication (ARVs) to HIV+ people who can 'afford' as a response to the looming funding gap for ARV treatment (ART). While the increasing funding retreat by international donors is a serious concern that needs to be dealt with, making the already vulnerable group of HIV+ people pay for their treatment is the last option that should be considered.

AIDS activists and researchers are at loggerheads over the planned South African trial of a lower dose version of the controversial antiretroviral stavudine, which has in the past been responsible for debilitating side-effects in HIV patients. In the one camp, the Treatment Action Campaign, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) and the Treatment Action Group have serious concerns about the proposed trial.

Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda, has inherited an unenviable to-do list from former president Bingu wa Mutharika, and AIDS activists are hoping that bolstering the donor-dependent AIDS response will be one of her most urgent priorities. A lot is at stake. An estimated 10 per cent of the adult population is HIV-positive, with about 70,000 Malawians newly infected with HIV every year. Yet the country is almost entirely dependent on external funding for its AIDS programmes, and ambitious plans to scale up treatment have been derailed after the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria rejected a succession of funding proposals.

A growing cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed nearly 400 lives and affected more than 19,100 people since January, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 'The total number of cholera cases in 2012 is around 90 percent of cases reported last year. Since January 2011, 983 people have died from the outbreak affecting eight of 11 provinces of the country,' Yvon Edoumou, OCHA spokesman, told a news conference.

Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy program, touted for improving food security for the past six years, has been allocated a whopping K40.6 billion in the 2012/13 budget which represents about 60 per cent of the Ministry of Agriculture allocation. 'The major allocation is for the Farm Inputs Subsidy Program (FISP) which has been allocated a total of K40.6 billion for the purchase of 150,000 metric tonnes of fertilizers comprising 75,000 metric tonnes of Urea and 75,000 metric tonnes of NPK fertilizers which will be distributed to 1.5 million farm families at a price of K500 per bag,' said Lipenga when he presented the financial plan.

New genetically altered corn aimed at helping farmers deal with drought offers more hype than help over the long term, according to a report issued by a science and environmental advocacy group. The Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) said the only genetically altered corn approved by regulators and undergoing field trials in the United States has no improved water efficiency, and provides only modest results in only moderate drought conditions.

A doctor examined the detainees and told them that they were in a bad condition and should stop their hunger strike.

When Redempta*, 22, fled the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) two years ago and came to Kenya, she quickly had to find a source of income to feed and house herself and her two younger siblings. But as an illegal immigrant with no knowledge of local languages, her options were very limited. 'I met some women from my country [DRC] and they introduced me to sex work because I needed to pay for the house and buy food for my siblings. I couldn't get any [other] work,' she told IRIN/PlusNews. As an illegal immigrant she is especially vulnerable because she can't report violent clients to the police, and is too afraid to seek medical help for her injuries.

In this Ceasefire Magazine article, Micah Roshan Reddy reports from Wits University, South Africa, about a hunger strike by students against a proposed abusive sacking of 17 catering staff that became an international campaign and secured a remarkable victory.

In this Birthing Justice narrative, Nayeli Guzman, a young Mexican woman who went to New Mexico to be part of the effort to restore traditional agriculture, talks about how she and other farmers are using long-abandoned farmland to grow long-abandoned crops, building up seed libraries, and teaching others ecological methods for growing food. Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives is a series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community.

Indigenous foods, neglected and derided by many in the agro and food industries as well as urban consumers, can be an important component in alleviating hunger, malnutrition and protecting the environment, the regional representative for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations told a symposium. A century of globalization has reduced the number of plant species used for food and other purposes from roughly 100,000 to about 30. With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, FAO is concerned that the world may not be able to produce enough food to meet demand. Today, an estimated 925 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, with over 60 percent of them residing in the Asia-Pacific region.

13 men from Darfur region of Sudan have been on hunger strike for 6 days at Campsfield Immigration Removal Centre in Kidlington, near Oxford.

The continued stock out of the antiretroviral tenofovir and the failure to advise health workers on how to deal with it is a looming disaster, HIV Clinicians and activists are warning. Reports of stock outs go as far back as October last year with the explanation given that the drug suppliers Aspen and Sonke were not able to meet the demand once they were awarded the tender. Dr Francesca Conradie, President of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society said they had submitted the clinical guidelines for health workers on how to swop out medications in February, but that it has not been ratified by the health department meaning it is not being used.

Parts of the developing world, particularly India and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, will suffer food shortages if their planned biofuels targets are implemented by 2020, a study has warned. The study, which looked at 25 countries and geographical regions, including Latin American and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, found that the targets will also affect national wealth.

Thousands of infants born in remote northern parts of Kenya in the past six weeks risk contracting tuberculosis (TB) due to a vaccine shortage, with medics warning that the effects could be severe in areas where there is already little access to maternity and vaccination services. In the north-central Isiolo region, for example, stocks of the TB Bacillus Camille Guérin (BCG) vaccine ran out at the main Isiolo District Hospital in early April, leaving hundreds of babies unimmunized.

The prevalence of drug-resistant HIV strains in Uganda has risen from 8.6 per cent to 12 per cent in the last five years, one of the highest rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent study. The PharmAccess African Studies to Evaluate Resistance (PASER) monitoring cohort study report for 2008-2012 found that the prevalence of transmitted drug resistance among people who have never taken life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication was substantially higher in Uganda.

The Basic Health Centre or Centre de Santé de Base (CSB) II in Anjalajala, near Antsohihy, the capital of Madagascar's northern Sofia Region, is housed in a recently renovated building and its status as a CSB II promises the availability of a trained doctor. But the doctor left for Antananarivo, the capital, in 2002 and has not been replaced, and whenever the remaining nurse is absent, services stop. The situation at this clinic is not unique in Madagascar, where an already weak healthcare system has been in a state of decline since 2009 when the international community branded Andry Rajoelina's ousting of President Marc Ravalomanana a coup, and donors halted all but emergency aid.

Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives is a series featuring 12 alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. The eighth narrative of Birthing Justice focuses on Julie Castro, a young doctor from France, a country that proves that it is possible for a nation to offer quality health care for all.