As Kenya puts more HIV-positive children on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, experts are warning that unless more effort is put into ensuring the medicines are taken regularly, widespread treatment failure could result. 'It is very hard to maintain adherence in children because they rely on others to give them medicine, some change regimens as they grow into adolescence and they can hardly cope with the many drugs they are expected to take,' said Dr Andrew Suleh, medical superintendent at the Mbagathi District Hospital in the capital, Nairobi.

It will no longer be business as usual for those who have been discriminating against Aids patients, reports The Daily Nation. That was the message by the seven-member HIV and Aids Tribunal after they were sworn in at the High Court by deputy registrar Rose Ougo. Lawyer Ambrose Otieno Rachier, who will chair the tribunal, said it was a great occasion and a new dawn for those who have been victimised as a result of their HIV status, adding, the time for silent suffering was over. 'The tribunal is going to address fundamental human rights abuses as a result of an individual’s HIV status and come with remedies to redress the injustices,' Mr Rachier said.

The nurse at Najembe Health Centre in Buikwe district says the centre’s supply of malaria drugs will be finished in two days. A malaria epidemic has hit the area and the demand for the drugs is high. But the centre, which serves the entire sub-county, will have to wait up to six weeks before their supply will be replenished. The Ugandan government changed the policy of distributing drugs to parish and sub-county health centres in 2009 by implementing a policy where the National Medical Stores decides what drugs to supply and in what quantities. (A parish health centre is a clinic that provides medical treatment for up to 12 villages.) Previously heads of these health centres requisitioned the drugs, depending on their needs. The National Medical Stores supply 70 per cent of the drugs in public health centres and district health officials locally procure the remaining 30 per cent.

The current drought in Kenya and the Horn of Africa is expected to affect millions. Farm Radio Weekly has a story that tells how affected families in a semi-arid region of Kenya are changing their opinions about cassava. Once stigmatized as a crop for the desperately poor, it is now feeding families in areas with insufficient rain to grow maize.

Reports from the southern Mozambican province of Inhambane indicate that acute hunger is worsening in several districts. Families have resorted to eating wild fruits and roots due to irregular rains and wild animals destroying the little production in the area. Though there are no reports of famine-related deaths, state television, TVM, has reported that if measures are not quickly taken, the situation will become catastrophic.

African farmers’ organisations, members of the International Movement of Peasants, La Via Campesina, and allied organisations denounce every attempt to adopt genetically modified organisms, GMOs, as being a false solution to the food crisis in Africa. According to the farmers, all of the myths promoting GMOs as a 'miracle' to increase productivity are false, as they threaten the genetic integrity of the local varieties that are the basis of African food security. Only organic food production, based on local knowledge and skills, can feed the continent, as diversified, agroecological farming systems actually produce more total food per hectare than does industrial monoculture.

Successive poor rains coupled with rising food and fuel prices are leading to a worsening food security situation with alarming levels of acute malnutrition being recorded in drought affected parts of Kenya, mainly in the north of the country, say experts. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2011 is the driest period in the eastern Horn of Africa since 1995 'with no likelihood of improvement until early 2012'.

Almost 1,000 suspected cases of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne viral disease that causes fever and severe joint pain, have been recorded in the Republic of Congo's capital over the past two weeks. The disease's symptoms include muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash, and are similar to those of dengue fever. There is no known cure; treatment consists of relieving the symptoms.

The first-ever official meeting of Ministers of Agriculture from G20 countries, to be held in Paris 22-23 June presents an extraordinary opportunity, says this IPS article. 'Tasked with developing an action plan to address price volatility in food and agricultural markets and its impact on the poor, the ministers are uniquely positioned to not only tackle the immediate price volatility problems, but also to take on a more fundamental and long-term challenge - extreme poverty and hunger. As experts in agriculture, the ministers no doubt know what extensive research confirms: Investing in agriculture and rural development, with a focus on smallholder farmers, is the best bet for achieving global food security, alleviating poverty, and improving human wellbeing in developing countries.'

Critics are challenging the way a major procurer of vaccines for the developing world operates. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), a public-private initiative that held a major funding meeting in London, United Kingdom recently, raising US$4.3 billion, has come under fire for the way it spends its money. 'The GAVI model depends on giving more and more money, year after year, to get vaccines to poor countries in ways that are not self-sustaining and at prices that are unaffordable,' says Donald Light, a professor at Princeton University, United States. GAVI's decisions are skewed by the pharmaceutical companies that sit on its board, non-governmental organisation Médecins Sans Frontières and development charity Oxfam, tell The Guardian.

A cheap new meningitis vaccine designed to treat a type of the disease common in Africa could significantly reduce or even halt future epidemics in Africa's so-called 'meningitis belt', scientists said. International researchers said the vaccine, called MenAfriVac and made by the Indian generic drugmaker Serum Institute, was far more effective than older so-called meningococcal polysaccaride vaccines, including Mencevax from GlaxoSmithKline, in trials in three African countries. In two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which MenAfriVac's potency and effectiveness was compared with a standard vaccine often used during meningitis outbreaks in the region, scientists said the new shot was 'dramatically better'.

Every electoral district is set to have a primary health care nurse-driven team established in future with specialist doctor teams assigned to districts where maternal and child mortality is high, the health department has revealed. The recruitment of retired nurses to promote health schools will kick off in the next week. Health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi returned from a study tour to Brazil last year and announced that he was determined to revitalise the country’s primary health care system, copying some of the successes from the Latin American country.

'Zimbabwean farmers’ organizations are hosting a training meeting on agroecology, an encounter organized by La Via Campesina (LVC) Africa in Masvingo province in Zimbabwe, from June 13 to 19. The training workshop brings together LVC member organizations in the continent, key allies including academics, NGOs, social science practioners, and small-scale farmers.'

Across the continent, there is new attention to the practical requirements of effective immunisation campaigns. Dr Seraphine Adibaku, head of Uganda's malaria control programme, says his country has already started raising popular awareness of the coming availability of a malaria vaccine, with the most recent meeting of officials from the ministry of health and developers of the vaccine and other stake holders held in May. 'We are conscious not to cause excitement because it can lead to undesirable consequences but we have to tell the people that a vaccine could be here sooner than later,' says Adibaku.

The roll-out of a revolutionary meningitis vaccination in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has dramatically cut transmission rates, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and if each country can find sufficient funds to co-finance the campaign, it will be extended to all 25 countries in the Africa meningitis belt by 2016, says the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). In the 2010-2011 meningitis season, Burkina Faso has confirmed just four cases of meningitis A; Niger has reported four cases; and Mali none, according to WHO.

Local understanding of children’s immune systems may be delaying access to paediatric HIV treatment, according to a study at a rural clinic in northern Malawi, where just 15 per cent of children in need of antiretrovirals (ARVs) are receiving the drugs. Research presented at the 1st International HIV Social Science and Humanities Conference in Durban, South Africa, showed that caregivers were reluctant to start sick, HIV-positive children on ARVs because they believed the children’s bodies were too weak for pills and their blood was 'still raw', but that as it 'ripened' with time, HIV-related opportunistic infections would leave them.

The UN food agency has warned of worsening food shortages due to drought in the Horn of Africa region, saying eight million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia need aid now. 'The current crisis is not an unusual or chance event, but rather a chronic feature of the region,' Rod Charters, regional emergency coordinator for the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said in a statement. 'The region has now experienced two consecutive seasons of significantly below-average rainfall, resulting in failed crop production, depletion of grazing resources and significant livestock mortality,' FAO said.

Discriminatory laws and a largely homophobic society mean that men who have sex with men (MSM) in Kenya generally find it difficult to access HIV-related information and health services, but rural MSM have an especially hard time. When Kibet Kipsowen*, 30, a cattle keeper in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, and his partner have sex, they use the oil-based jelly he applies when milking his cows; he’s never heard of a water-based lubricant, let alone used one. Health practitioners discourage the use of oil-based lubricants for anal sex, as the oil degrades condoms, increasing the likelihood that they will break. Studies have found that most African MSM use oil-based lubricants, heightening their risk of contracting HIV.

The global shortage of health workers is estimated at 4.2 million by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but the migration of doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists from poor to rich countries means the shortfall is not evenly distributed - of the 57 nations identified as having reached a crisis point, 36 are in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries with fragile health systems and heavy disease burdens, over half of all highly trained health workers have left for job opportunities abroad. In some of the worst cases rural hospitals have been left with just one doctor and a handful of nurses to attend to thousands of patients. What has worked so far in addressing the problem? IRIN took a look at some of the push and pull factors behind health worker migration, and what countries are doing to address them.

After several years of fragile gains, Malawi’s healthcare sector is running into trouble, with the latest challenge an aid freeze by its largest international donor, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). The UK provided about US$122 million annually to Malawi, of which $49 million went to funding Malawi’s public health sector, but DFID made its final aid disbursement in March and has decided not to renew a six-year funding commitment which ends in June.