HIV stakeholders are calling on the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to speed up the registration of critical anti-HIV medication or face legal action. The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society has sent an appeal to the health minister to intervene and address the MCC registration process which they describe as the single biggest obstacle to getting affordable access to medicines.

Every Tuesday you will find 70-year-old Precious Dlamini under a tree, weighing children and babies from her local community as she monitors their health and nutrition. Though she may not have any official qualifications to do so, Dlamini is a retired teacher, she devotes much of her time to caring for the orphaned children in her community and educating people about a healthy lifestyle.

Bill Law investigates the causes and consequences of the great global land grab, as richer nations and multi-national corporations acquire vast tracts of land in developing countries. Big corporations and countries are eying up Africa for mega agricultural development. Critics call it the new land grab, but Africa can benefit from the expertise, infrastructure and equity that such developments bring - if the terms are right. Bill visits Kenya to weigh up the pros and cons of agricultural super projects in a country wrestling with food insecurity.

International People’s Health University (IPHU) of the People’s Health Movement (PHM) and Great Lakes University of Kisumu (GLUK) announce "THE STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH" a short training course from 19 to 28 April 2010 in Kisumu, Kenya. In association with the 7th TICH annual scientific conference: Innovations towards Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (29 April – 2 May, 2010).

This study examines the impact of two decades of neoliberal policy reform on food production and household livelihood security in three West African countries. The rice sectors in The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali are scrutinized as well as cotton and its relationship to sorghum production in Mali. Although market reforms were intended to improve food production, the net result was an increasing reliance on imported rice.

New national treatment guidelines are set to make the world's largest antiretroviral (ARV) programme even bigger as South Africa extends treatment to more HIV-positive infants, pregnant women and people battling HIV-tuberculosis (TB) co-infection.

Amina* and Rajab*, in their mid-twenties, spend most of their days getting high on heroin; when broke, Amina injects herself with Rajab's blood as soon as he has mainlined his heroin, for a second-hand hit. "Rajab is the one who first introduced me to the idea of transfusing myself with his blood whenever we'd run out of the drug and the cash to buy [more]," she told IRIN/PlusNews from her home in Majengo, a low-income estate in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa.

utrition experts in Guinea are studying options for treating moderately malnourished children, as funding shortages disrupt normal programmes using fortified flour. In recent months local health centres ran out of supplies and had to refer families to remote facilities for corn-soya blend (CSB), used for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition and provided by donors through the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

Health officials in the west African country of Burkina Faso are worried about an increase in deaths from meningitis which has killed 246 people so far this year, up from 203 in the same period last year.

Nearly a fifth of the population in Chad will suffer food shortages this year, part of a broader hunger problem looming in the Sahel region, the United Nations said on Thursday. "Two million Chadians, or 18 percent of the population, are in a situation of food insecurity," said Michele Flavigna, the U.N.'s representative in Chad told a news conference.

The Third Meeting, Third Session of the Second East African Legislative Assembly sitting at the Chambers of the Parliament of Uganda in Kampala has today adopted a common strategy for food security in the region. In a lively plenary session chaired by the Speaker of EALA, Hon. Abdirahin Haithar Abdi, Members adopted the Report on common strategy for food security in the EAC as presented by the Chair of the Committee on Agriculture, Tourism and Natural Resources, Hon. Dr. George Francis Nangale (Tanzania).

Ruth Mumbi – of Bunge la Mwananchi and Kiamaiko Young Women in Kenya – writes of Lillian, who died while giving birth. She was, Mumbi holds, ‘a young, promising sister who could have had a brighter future if she had an opportunity to pursue her education’. Mumbi asks why her government can find 40 million shillings of taxpayers’ money to send ‘Al Faisal, who was disowned by other countries, back to Jamaica instead of providing for citizens, especially women who badly need reproductive health services.’ She asserts that many deaths as a result of childbirth in Kenya ‘are preventable if correct measures are taken and services brought closer to the people’.

The Kenya Prisons Service has won praise for its HIV programmes, including education, testing and the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to prisoners, but specialists say unless the issue of unprotected sex is addressed, HIV transmission will continue unchecked.

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.

Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.

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.

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.

African ministers, health researchers and pharmaceutical industry representatives began meeting today to discuss how to boost drug innovation and production on the continent. The African Expert Meeting on Pharmaceutical Innovation in Africa — taking place in Pretoria, South Africa this week (18–20 February) — aims to encourage African policymakers to act to boost drug development and access to essential medicines.

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.

Almost a quarter of patients eligible for HIV treatment in South Africa’s Free State province died before getting it, a further 13% disappeared from the healthcare system and 5% were still on a waiting list, according to a review of three years of progress in the province’s public sector antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme.