An estimated six per cent of Kenyan couples - about 344,000 - are HIV discordant, while a further 22 per cent of couples know the HIV status of their sexual partners. Although Kenya has national guidelines for promoting prevention among people living with HIV, implementing them has proved to be a challenge. Dr Charles Okal, the AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Coordinator for Nyanza Province says providing services for discordant couples is made difficult by the fact that testing is the only way to find them, yet couples rarely turn out for testing together.

Following the cyclone and floods that ravaged Quelimane town and its outskirts, health officials have raised concern over the possibilities of cholera, malaria and diarrhoeal outbreak. Tropical Cyclone Funso swept across the coastal areas of Zambezia province leaving trail of destruction to property and crops. Thousands of people were left homeless among them elderly, child-headed families and the sick. For the local health authorities in Quelimane, it is the destruction of water and sanitation facilities and puddles of water scattered around the affected communities which are of major concern.

Burkina Faso's Network for Access to Essential Medicines (RAME) has called on the Burkinabè government to increase the budget allocation to the health sector to avoid interruptions to AIDS treatment. Despite an emergency plan announced in January, which will see the government spend around one billion CFA francs - two million dollars - to procure AIDS drugs in this West African country, patients and civil society groups are demanding permanent measures to ensure the availability of anti- retrovirals and reagents.

Eleven people have died from meningitis out of 40 reported cases in four departments across Côte d’Ivoire as of 31 January, leaving people scrambling to access the vaccine for their families. The Ministry of Health has declared the outbreaks in the departments of Kouto and Tengrela in the north as epidemics, and is providing free vaccinations in both locations through mobile health teams, with the help of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

The Health Ministry in Zimbabwe said it has recorded two suspected typhoid deaths, as an outbreak of the disease appeared to worsen. The ministry was awaiting laboratory analysis to confirm if the deaths were the result of the bacterial disease that is spread through contaminated food and water. Since the start of the outbreak in late October, 2,716 cases have been identified, mostly in two crowded townships with limited and run-down sanitation infrastructure near the capital Harare.

South Africa is to build a R1,6bn pharmaceutical plant to produce the ingredients for antiretroviral medicines, used in the treatment of HIV and Aids, government announced. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said South Africa consumed R25bn-worth of medicines each year, the 'majority' of this imported.

Thirteen leaders of national and grassroots activist organisations in Tanzania were detained 10 February 2012 by the government in the Oyster Bay Police Station, Dar es Salaam, in a government clamp down on protests by women/feminist and human rights activists against the failure of the government to resolve the health crisis arising from a two week doctors strike in Tanzania. The leaders come from LHRC, TGNP, TAMWA, NEDPHA and several other grassroots organisations.

Some are arrested after successfully ‘Occupying’ Salander Bridge

Greenpeace announced in Brussels recently that annual industry figures to be released early next week are expected to confirm the commercial failure of genetically modified (GM) food in Europe. Widespread public opposition and environmental concerns expressed by several European governments, scientists and farmers have made GM food a commercial flop in Europe, said Greenpeace. Only Spain saw a noticeable rise in cultivation in 2012, slightly increasing overall figures for Europe after three consecutive years of decline.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says it’s ready to litigate against the Gauteng Health Department should it not clear its outstanding debt to suppliers. The TAC adds that the closure of health laboratories in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal has severely impacted on people who are HIV-positive and those with TB. Chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign, Nonkosi Khumalo says the closure of health laboratory services impacts on patients on Anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs) and those who need to be tested for TB. Blood tests are not being done due to the closures. Khumalo says some health care facilities are unable to initiate new patients on ARV treatment because they can’t get their blood tests to laboratories.

With global funding for HIV/AIDS on the decline, Zimbabwe's innovative AIDS levy - a 3 percent tax on income - has become a promising source of funding for the country, with a dramatic increase in revenue collected in the past two years. The levy was introduced in 1999 to compensate for declining donor support, but low salaries and the poor performance of industry meant not enough money had been collected - until recently. According to recently published audited financial statements for the year ending 31 December 2010, a total of US$20.5 million was collected in 2010 against $5.7 million the previous year.

Côte d’Ivoire’s leprosy programme was consistently under-funded during the civil war (2002-2007) and last year’s political turmoil, say health practitioners, leading to a loss of expertise in terms of detecting or treating the disease. Not considered a public health priority, the government and donors de-prioritized the leprosy fight over the past decade, with funding dropping to 30 per cent of the original total, according to Alain de Kersabiec, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin representative for French NGO the Follereau Foundation (FRF), which helps treat existing and new leprosy patients around the country.

Nineteen people were killed in the country’s cholera outbreak last year. More than 300 people cases were reported, and an epidemic was declared on 30 September 2011. Though neighbouring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have experienced outbreaks over the past decade, the Central African Republic had not seen a cholera case in as many as a dozen years. Today, the cholera outbreak is finally on the decline.

Access to accurate information about the extent and nature of large-scale foreign investment in Ethiopian, Sudanese and South Sudanese land is extremely limited. So broader narratives of 'land-grabbing' - seeing governments as unwitting victims or as predatory regimes – are a potentially misleading oversimplification in the Horn of Africa, where local populations do not lack agency in this process, says this briefing.

Studies have shown that the highest rates of HIV infection are among women stuck in financially dependent relationships where the only right is the right of the man. Silence increases violence.

The government is contemplating to open doors for Genetically Modified Crops (GMOs) in a decision expected to attract more international partners in the bio-technology industry. Addressing an international conference in Dar es Salaam, Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Prof Jumanne Maghembe said the country had no other option but to welcome the new technology. The national discussion on whether to allow GMOs is currently between the ministry of Agriculture and the Vice President's Office with a debate on safety legislation protecting farmers and consumers and whether to remove a contestable clause (strict liability clause) in the bio safety regulatory framework.

This edition of The Real News Network interviews the authors of a new report that calls for sweeping agricultural reform. The report states that the fundamental causes of the global food crisis remain. 'We sit poised on the verge of another food price spike that could push millions into poverty and hunger,' says one of the authors. Three of the main issues raised are the use of biofuels, which have driven up demand, financial speculation in the food system and land grabs.

It did not come as a surprise that the Committee on International Trade of the European Parliament (INTA) voted in favour of the EU-Moroccan Agriculture Agreement on the 26 January (23 votes in favour, 5 votes against, one abstention). By voting overwhelmingly in favour of the agreement, the members of the Committee have clearly rejected the report by the French Green, José Bové. From his point of view, the agreement does not bring any good, neither for Morocco nor for Europe, in the sense that it only serves to reinforce an 'export-based industrial agriculture at the expense of family farms and small-scale farming on both sides of the Mediterranean.'

A new attempt to quantify malaria deaths over the past 30 years suggests the death toll, especially among adults, has been greatly underestimated. The figures also show the fragility of the gains made in fighting the disease. Collecting data on malaria deaths is notoriously tricky; the countries where the disease is most prevalent have the weakest statistics. And even where causes of death were recorded, the researchers found many deaths were simply attributed to 'fever' – probably malaria, but possibly not. In addition, a malaria infection is often a contributory cause of death along with other health problems.

Men who have sex with men may now be at considerably higher risk of acquiring HIV than other at-risk groups such as female sex workers or young people of either sex, if findings by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) of HIV incidence at two centres in Kenya can be generalised to other populations. The study, which compared the Kenyan populations with a largely heterosexual group from South Africa, also found lower-than-expected HIV incidence amongst female sex workers and their clients. The researchers also found that recruiting MSM into the study was easier than expected, but note that there was a particularly high dropout rate in MSM.