The time has come for social activists to campaign for a Global Constitution on the Right to Health ending the current status quo where 'our ill health is politically constructed by those above us', activist Mark Heywood told the 3rd People’s Health Assembly (PHA). He said that across the world there was a growing recognition of the right to health, but that there was no definition of the duties that flow from this right. 'This means that there has really been no change in the approach to health, which means we need a global campaign for a Global Constitution on the Right to Health,' said Heywood.

In this article about the state of South Africa's public health system, a doctor relates her experience of working on a trauma ward. 'We shouldn’t, however, allow our feelings about how perfect we expect nurses and doctors to be to blind us to the real problem, which is the shambles in which the Department of Health has left our healthcare system,' she writes. 'It is not clinicians on the ground who decide how many hospitals there should be, how many beds those hospitals should contain, what services those hospitals should offer, and how well those hospitals should be staffed. Those things are decided by administrators, as they should be. Those administrators are appointed by the Department of Health, also as it should be. And the Department of Health is run by a bunch of politicians, who are doing the most terrible job of representing the interests of the people who put them there.'

A report on Monday said 1.63-million Malawians, out of a population of 13-million, would need food aid after crops failed in the south of the country, despite a bumper harvest of three-million tonnes nationwide. The study was conducted by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee, which comprises several government departments, the United Nations, embassies and humanitarian agencies. Only 200,000 people required food aid last year.

HIV care and treatment has come a long way in the past decade, write Brian Honermann and Mark Heywood in this opinion piece marking 10 years since South Africa's Constitutional Court upheld the constitutional right of all HIV positive pregnant women to access health care services to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT). 'In 2002, an HIV positive mother would pass on HIV to her baby about 30% of the time. With access to Nevirapine the transmission rate was cut in half. Now, with better drug regimens being used, transmission of HIV from mothers to babies happens in only about 4% of cases during or shortly after birth.'

South Africa needs to urgently look to countries such as Rwanda, Thailand and Brazil, where they have employed community health workers (CHWs) to deliver a range of primary health care services that dramatically reduced mortality, public health expert Professor David Sanders told the National Health Assembly (NHA). Speaking during a plenary session, Sanders said by extending the scope of what CHWs could do and by supporting properly selected and trained individuals, the country could make a very real impact on maternal and child mortality.

A new study from Earth Open Source called 'GMO Myths and Truths' - authored by two well known genetic engineers with help from an investigative reporter - conducted an exhaustive survey of hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies. The report concluded not only that GM food crops pose significant, if largely under-evaluated, health risks, but that they have so far failed to deliver on their promise to increase crop yields and lower herbicide and pesticide use.

One year after South Sudan declared independence, many humanitarian needs remain unmet. Communities lack access to basic health-care services. The situation is particularly difficult in northern regions close to the border with Sudan. Recent fighting in this area has had a direct impact on the availability and price of food, contributing to an increase in child deaths from malnutrition. 'In Malakal Teaching Hospital, there has been a dramatic rise in child malnutrition admissions over the past three months, since fighting escalated,' said Melker Mabeck, the head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in South Sudan.

Only 13 diseases or infections transmitted from animals to humans like tuberculosis (TB) and Rift Valley fever, are responsible for around 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths per year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. In the least developed countries, 20 per cent of human sickness and death was due to zoonoses - diseases that had recently jumped species from animals to people - according to a new study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Institute of Zoology in Britain, and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam. The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that at least 61 per cent of all human diseases, and 75 per cent of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic or caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus or other communicable disease agent picked up from an animal source.

Nigeria’s health services halved the maternal mortality rate between 1990 and 2010, but in parts of the predominantly Muslim north, which is less socio-economically advanced, women are 10 times more likely to die in childbirth than in the oil-rich, predominantly Christian south. Maternal health personnel are calling for more appropriate interventions to bridge the gap. Reasons for the divide mirror those in many West African states: too few referral facilities and health practitioners - especially midwives - and inadequate antenatal equipment; too few clinics and poor roads that make accessing clinics difficult and expensive; poverty and cultural barriers to visiting hospitals.

The war against drugs is hurting the fight against HIV, according to a new report by the Global Commission on Drug policy, an international panel that advocates science-based strategies to reduce the harm caused by drugs. 'The public health implications of HIV treatment disruptions resulting from drug law enforcement tactics have not been appropriately recognized as a major impediment to efforts to control the global HIV/AIDS pandemic,' the authors said. 'The war on drugs has also led to a policy distortion, whereby evidence-based addiction treatment and public health measures have been downplayed or ignored.'

29 June 2012 - Two Sudanese men currently detained in Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre in London have been on hunger strike for 37 days in protest against their indefinite detention, and are determined to continue until they are released. Visitors and human rights activists supporting their cases are extremely concerned for their health.

A review of: (1) Fred Pearce, The Landgrabbers. The New Fight over Who Owns the Planet, Eden Project Books, London, 2012, pp.xii + 388, £20; and (2) GRAIN, The Great Food Robbery: How corporations control food, grab land and destroy the climate, Pambazuka Press, Oxford, 2012, pp.164, £14.95.

The initiative for the report came not from campaigners but from two genetic engineers who believe there are good scientific reasons to be wary of GM foods and crops.

Complaint filed with Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board against Bruce Rastetter over the Tanzania land grab.

Africa is often said to be overpopulated. But it is quite easy to debunk this myth. The continent is a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population well into the foreseeable future.

Since December 2011, the food crisis in Niger has displaced large numbers of people from areas of scarcity to parts of the country that enjoyed better harvests. The social impacts for these internal migrants are serious, not least in terms of disruption of education. According to estimates from the Ministry of Education, around 45,000 children have left school this year for reasons linked to the food crisis.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has vowed to mobilise more communities to fight for quality health should the Gauteng Health Department not deliver on their demands. Angry TAC members marched to the office of the Gauteng Health MEC, Ntombi Mekgwe, this week, demanding an end to the drug shortage in health facilities. Health services in Gauteng have been dealt a severe blow due to drug stock outs which have been ongoing for months.

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the unusual event of two reports concentrating on the same issue being presented at the twentieth session of the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday 19 June 2012. The reports, by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, both focus on the issue of impunity for violations of journalists’ human rights. Both reports urge relevant state and non-state actors to secure journalists’ rights by implementing international human rights law and monitoring this implementation.

No single infection has probably inspired as many conspiracy theories as AIDS has over the last 30 years. The science of AIDS has endured tremendous attacks from as early as when the virus first appeared. A book entitled 'The AIDS Conspiracy – Science Fights Back', looks at how science has triumphed and sought to bring sense to a condition that has attracted a flurry of mad conspiracy theories. The book traces the emergence of AIDS denialism both in the United States and in South Africa from as early as when AIDS was believed to be the American government’s way of destroying sex and mankind. This is the second book on AIDS conspiracies and denialism that has been written by Nicoli Natrass, a professor at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town.

A petition backed by over 50 NGOs and charging Uganda's government with failing to prevent the deaths of expectant mothers was thrown out by the constitutional court on 5 June, but the petition’s supporters plan to appeal. The constitutional court argued that upholding the petition, which urges the government to boost health services, would have forced judges to wade into a political issue that was outside their jurisdiction. However, the petitioners said the court relied on outdated international law in making its decision and overlooked its constitutional obligation to protect Uganda’s mothers.