SECTION27 and the TAC have welcomed the proposed increases in health expenditure outlined in the budget tabled by Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan on 23 February 2011. 'However, we are concerned that the additional R11 billion available for 2011/12 will not necessarily translate into improvements in the delivery of health care services in the absence of a reasonable plan to address endemic and systemic problems with budgeting and expenditure within health departments at all spheres of government,' said a statement.

Zimbabwe’s government recently announced that the country had run out of the critical painkiller morphine. It was just the latest development in a debilitating health care crisis that has seen hospitals turn away patients because of drug shortages. In the absence of even a basic drug such as paracetamol, desperate patients like 44-year-old asthma sufferer Susan Pamire have turned to traditional herbs.

Cocoa farmers in Cote d’Ivoire are bearing the brunt of a ban on the export of cocoa beans, reports Farm Radio Weekly. On January 23 this year, Alassane Ouattara called for a month-long ban on cocoa and coffee exports. His aim is to starve Laurent Gbagbo of the funds that are keeping him in power.

Lindiwe Zono is a member of the Phadima Agricultural Association in the Sekhukhune District of Limpopo province, in northwestern South Africa. The association has started a seed bank to preserve and increase their supply of traditional food plants, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Zono says that seed saving was once an almost sacred duty among the Pedi, the largest ethnic group in the province. The seed bank builds on this tradition. It aims to make use of and promote traditional crops such as sorghum, millet, cowpeas, maize, and pumpkin. It began in 2000 and covers seven villages.

Most Swazis go to traditional healers if they feel ill, but in a country with the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate healers are struggling to cope. Thabile Xaba, 37, a healer who has been diagnosed HIV-positive at a clinic, told IRIN about her experiences. 'I was almost done with high school when our traditional healer told me the ancestral spirits wanted me to become a healer. He did this by reading the "bones", which is what I can now do too. A person who is chosen must agree or there will be misfortune, like an illness will strike you. You must accept your fate. It is like being chosen as one of the king’s wives. You accept it.'

Global food prices continue to rise, though not uniformly for all grains. The World Bank’s food price index rose by 15 per cent between October 2010 and January 2011, is 29 per cent above its level a year earlier, and only 3 per cent below its June 2008 peak. A breakdown of the index shows that the grain price index remains 16 per cent below its peak mainly due to relatively stable rice prices, which are significantly lower than in 2008. The increase over the last quarter is driven largely by increases in the price of sugar (20 per cent), fats and oils (22 per cent), wheat (20 per cent), and maize (12 per cent).

Over the last two years, a small vehicle known as the 'motorcycle-wheelbarrow' has changed the lives of farmers in Pokola, reports Farm Radio Weekly. The vehicle has three wheels and features a large bucket on the back. Before the motorcycle-wheelbarrows arrived, many producers abandoned their fields because they were unable to get their produce to market. But with its help, farmers now lose fewer of their crops after harvest. Many farmers have increased their productivity.

This document from the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre provides an overview of the four groups that have emerged as major political players in Egypt's political transition. Having actively supported an authoritarian regime for 30 years, US and European politicians now have a unique opportunity to engage more seriously with the real forces of change, the document suggests.

The high cost of maternity and health care, the lack of a proper follow-up system, and a limited ability to diagnose HIV infection early in babies means many Zimbabwean children are not being caught by the safety net that the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme was intended to provide. At least 150,000 children below the age of 15 are living with HIV, and more than 90 per cent of HIV infections can be attributed to vertical transmission, according to government figures.

While the US has condemned egregious examples of rights-violating policies in Uganda, it still funds HIV interventions that are inherently anti-LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) and anti-woman, says this Huffington Post article. 'They assume and reinforce the idea that everyone is heterosexual, everyone is going to get married, and everyone has control over when and with whom they and their partner have sex; ideas that are flat-out wrong and result in useless HIV interventions and rancid discrimination.'

The supply of water is often said to be this century’s greatest challenge, and with good reason. However, in many parts of the world it is the lack of adequate sanitation and safe hygiene practices that remain the most ubiquitous threat to people’s health. Addressing this offers the chance to bring fundamental change to the lives of billions. This is no truer than in Sub-Saharan Africa where only 31 per cent of people have access to improved sanitation facilities, a number that falls to 24 per cent in rural areas.

Wesley Kipkoech*, 21, may be illiterate and speak only his native Ndorobo tongue, but he understands all too well that if he does not have regular access to his HIV medication, he is likely to die. Kipkoech is one of hundreds of internally displaced people living on the edges of the Mau Forest Complex in Kenya's Rift Valley Province after the government began evicting them in 2009, in a bid to rehabilitate the forest after decades of farming, charcoal burning and other harmful activities.

A study has found that about 55 per cent of HIV patients in South Africa who are not eligible for treatment at the time of diagnosis will disappear from clinics within a year of initial monitoring, leaving a serious gap in HIV care and prevention, say researchers. Most patients in South Africa must have a CD4 count - a measure of the immune system’s strength - of 200 or less to be eligible for antiretrovirals (ARVs), but previous research has shown that about two-thirds of people will not meet ARV treatment criteria at diagnosis.

Recently released global data by UNAids points to enormous progress in preventing and treating HIV. More people than ever before now live with HIV as a chronic disease, rather than dying from it, because they are getting antiretroviral treatment. Kenya is a good example. Over the past year, the number of people taking the drugs has risen by 25 per cent. But a central issue has been absent from the debate. The optimistic ?gures gloss over the enormous pain su?ered by millions of HIV patients - needless su?ering that can be prevented.

Over 100 European and international organisations are calling on the G20 Finance Ministers to rein in speculation on food prices by banks, hedge funds and pension funds. The finance ministers will be discussing responses to the record food prices which are at ‘dangerous’ levels according to the World Bank with 44 million more people pushed into poverty since last June.

The price of rice, the staple food in Madagascar, has doubled in the past two years, forcing residents in the capital, Antananarivo, to halve their consumption. 'At almost 2,000 ariary (US$1) a kilogramme, rice has become a luxury item,' Tiana Randrianirina, a rice seller at the main market in the capital, told IRIN.

Immunisation against pneumococcal disease, a leading killer of children in Africa, is beginning as a vaccine made by British company GSK is rolled out across Kenya. Thousands of lives will be saved - but could it have been done more cheaply? asks this blog article from the London Guardian.

Alcohol causes nearly four per cent of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence, the World Health Organisation has warned. Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said.

The Rwandan government plans to expand its national voluntary male circumcision programme using a new device, the PrePex system, which officials say saves both time and money. The PrePex system works through a special elastic mechanism that fits closely around an inner ring, trapping the foreskin, which dries up and is removed after a week. A study conducted by the Rwandan Ministries of Defence and Health in 2010 found the device to be safe and effective.