Website Africa Focus has a feature on HIV/AIDS and health as a human right. 'In the last 15 years, AIDS activists and medical professionals, in Africa and around the world, have won the recognition that the fight against AIDS, which disproportionately affects the African continent, is a shared global responsibility. Millions of lives have been saved. But the fight against AIDS and the wider commitment to health as a universal human right is now threatened by AIDS fatigue and austerity politics.'

A two-week-long mass strike by doctors, who demanded a pay rise from hospitals in the Nigerian state of Lagos, has taken a deadly toll on a significant number of patients in need of urgent medical care. Hospital staff say many patients have either died or continue to suffer as the strike by about 1,000 doctors paralysed the medical institutions.

To push genetically engineered crops into Africa, the promoters work hard to ensure lax biosafety laws, ignore the Africa Model Law on Biosafety and ensure lack of transparency while truncating participation.

One day after being sworn in on 2 April, Senegal’s new President Macky Sall reversed months of public denial of the hunger affecting over 800,000 of his people - part of the Sahel-wide crisis affecting 16 million inhabitants - by calling on partners to help the country get food to those in need. UN agencies and NGOs are struggling to raise enough money to get programmes working so they can catch up with the steadily rising number of hungry people.

A drought is threatening Angola's already modest food production, in a setback for efforts to revive once-vibrant farmlands abandoned during decades of war. The dry season that normally lasts only about three weeks in December has stretched to three months in parts of the southern African country where most regions are used to abundant rainfall almost year-round. 'Production has collapsed throughout the central and southern regions,' said Belarmino Jelembi, national coordinator of the Association for Rural and Environmental Development.

East Africa's Legislative Assembly has passed a regional HIV/AIDS Bill that seeks to protect the rights of people living with HIV and harmonize regional legislation and policy on the prevention and treatment of HIV. Activists have welcomed the passing of the Bill, which, unlike some of the laws in the region's individual member states, does not criminalize the deliberate transmission of HIV.

Who are the people behind grassroots movements, farming unions, groundbreaking research and government policy that are helping to stave off hunger, boost crop harvests and put more food on tables? AlertNet put this question to dozens of experts and researchers from leading non-governmental organisations and research institutes involved in nutrition and agriculture and have come up with a 'Top 10 food trailblazers' list.

A consortium of civil society organisations are pushing for government reforms in the health and education sectors. Among others they want the percentage of government allocation to the health sector increased to meet the Abuja Declaration target of 15 per cent.

A lack of awareness of the importance of skilled hospital deliveries in Ethiopia, cultural beliefs, and transport challenges in rural areas are causing a high number of deaths during childbirth, say officials. Only 10 per cent of deliveries take place within health facilities, according to the Ethiopia’s latest (April) Demographic Health Survey results. Nevertheless, the figure is a significant improvement on 6 percent in the previous 2005 survey.

Only a fraction of the millions of people worldwide with blood and autoimmune disorders survive - especially those in poorer countries - partly due to the lack of bone marrow stem cell transplants. A recently established Nigerian bone marrow registry hopes to boost matches between donors and patients, and survival chances. Some 200,000 babies are born annually in sub-Saharan Africa with sickle cell disease, a blood disorder in which mutated red blood cells can clump and block blood vessels, causing pain, infection and organ damage. Nigeria has up to two million sickle cell patients, many of whom can benefit from stem cell transplants.

Ghana has become the first country in Africa to start protecting children against two of the continent's deadliest infant diseases with simultaneous vaccinations. The diseases targeted are rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea, and pneumococcal, both of which kill more than 2.7 million children worldwide each year. The project is backed by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

The Globe and Mail has an article about Bill Gates and his advocacy of technology in the agriculture sector. 'Relying on genetically modified (GM) crops and chemicals to push up output per acre may help Monsanto (which was one of the stocks in the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio), Syngenta and other tech-driven food biggies, but won’t necessarily support those who need the most help-poor smallholder farmers and underdeveloped countries. Making them part of Big Ag’s global supply chain might not help either.'

The traditional farming methods of smallholder farmers – which, researchers say, also help to fight soil depletion, reduce irrigation needs and adapt to climate change – may soon disappear. They are being wiped out by governments focused on promoting commercial monocultures that they hope will bring fast, high yields in order to boost national agricultural sales on global markets.

Sonke Gender Justice has launched a new publication, 'Mapping the Legal Framework to Prevent Sexual Violence & HIV in South Africa’s Correctional Facilities.' Sexual violence and HIV and AIDS are key areas of concern for Sonke, as inmates experience both at heightened proportions. HIV and sexual violence are inherently linked, particularly in South Africa’s prisons where external estimates for HIV range between 40-60 per cent.

Malaria cases have increased dramatically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, leaving clinics and treatment centres unable to cope, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned. The number of people treated for malaria in MSF projects has soared by 250 per cent since 2009 in six provinces – half of the vast African country – and accelerated even more sharply in recent months. The reasons for the trend are not clear, although it is thought renewed fighting by militia groups has made it increasingly difficult for people to access prevention and treatment for the mosquito-borne disease.

New international HIV testing guidelines are encouraging couples to test together and for immediate initiation on antiretrovirals for the one testing positive. The World Health Organisation issued the guidelines recommending that a person living with HIV who has an HIV-negative partner (a 'sero-discordant' partnership) be offered HIV treatment regardless of their CD4 cell count level (measure of their immunity).

This brief update from the United Nations Fund (UNICEF) reports on recent developments in polio-endemic Nigeria. As of 13th of April 2012, 20 new cases of wild poliovirus (WPV) have been reported in eight states, compared to nine cases for the same time period in four states in 2011. The polio eradication programme is addressing challenges in campaign quality while dealing with a deteriorating security situation. In key infected states (Borno, Kano, Sokoto, Yobe), more than one in three children has received less than four doses of the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Gay rights activists in Uganda want the government to declassify homosexuality as a mental health disorder. Activists have expressed concern that most health workers interviewed said homosexuals were mad people deserving psychiatric intervention.

Nathan Charles spent over two months investigating and exposing the poor conditions at the Bong Mines hospital in Bong County, Liberia. Through his ongoing investigation, Charles discovered that not only did the health center have inadequate facilities to serve the surrounding community, it also was short on doctors and medication. It wasn’t long before word spread about the conditions patients endured at the Bong Mines Hospital and the Liberian government was forced to step in.

Grantees of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria who allegedly committed fraud or misused funds unwittingly did a lot of damage to the Fund – and, many say, global health - as donors withdrew and the beleaguered organization faced a 'crisis of confidence' in recent years. But the Fund has responded and is undergoing an extensive restructuring process. IRIN/PlusNews takes a look at some of the alleged fraudsters and the progress of the investigations.