Real Stories Gallery is a conversation created by our visual arts and stories, to shift perceptions surrounding HIV and AIDS. Today HIV affects the lives of men, women and children on all continents around the world. Artists, poets, writers and storytellers from across the breadth and depth of our communities, are invited to share their experiences, reflections and life-saving knowledge. By working together we will inspire a culture of compassion and acceptance for our neighbours whose lives are affected. To submit your contribution you will first need to 'Register'. Once this is done you will then 'Add Your Contribution' to the Gallery, by uploading a photographic image of your work and/or text in word document form. Poets, creative writers and storytellers will follow the same submissions procedure. As will those who would like to contribute music or video submissions. You may choose to exhibit only or to sell your work.

Nigist Abebe has grown in confidence over five years on the job. Today she is one of 34,000 rural health extension workers at the heart of Ethiopia’s primary health care strategy. One of her most important functions in Dengo Furda Kebele, the village she was born and raised in, is supporting women through pregnancy and childbirth. An estimated 94 per cent of Ethiopian mothers give birth at home and in 2005, when the Health Extension program started, 720 mothers died per 100,000 live births.

Until 2007, when international medical NGO Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) came to Swaziland to help the Ministry of Health in the response on HIV/AIDS and TB in the Shiselweni region, HIV/AIDS and TB treatment was not available at any of the region’s 21 clinics. Patients had to either travel to the Hlathikhulu Government Hospital or Matsanjeni and Nhlangano health centres. These centres were located in each of the towns of the different regions in the country. A health centre is a facility that is smaller than a hospital with a few beds and does not have a theatre to do operations. MSF worked with government to bring services to the clinics, but this was not enough because some patients were either too weak or too poor to reach even the clinics.

Concentration in the agrifood sector has been increasing over the past few years, with sometimes tragic consequences for small-scale farmers and agricultural workers. In this new briefing note, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food explores how the creation and abuse of dominant buyer power by global agribusiness firms can be addressed in competition law, and how developed and developing States can work together in this way. The note shows that global food supply chains will contribute significantly to the reduction of rural poverty only to the extent that such abuses are effectively combated through competition law regimes that are designed to be consistent with the obligation of States to protect the right to adequate food.

Meeting the world's future food needs is dependent on preserving the genetic diversity of the plants we grow and eat, as well as their 'wild relatives'. While collecting and saving the world's seed patrimony in 'gene banks' or ex situ may be a worthy endeavor, a new FAO publication underscores the critical need for efforts that protect agricultural biodiversity on the farm itself or in situ. This means supporting the millions of small farmers and peasants throughout the world who manage diverse species of plants and animals in and around their fields.

After the sound of gunfire fell silent in Southern Sudan, marking the end of one of Africa's longest running civil wars, Pio Kowr Ding decided he would return home to the autonomous region to take up an agricultural research job with the government. With a masters degree in soil and land evaluation, and experience working for the Agricultural Research Corporation's Land and Water Research Center (LWRC) in Khartoum, Ding was keen to help the region rebuild its agricultural research. But when he arrived in 2008 he realised that the task was actually to start from scratch and the living conditions were tough.

'Why, if condoms are available, is AIDS still spreading in Africa?' asks Elkana Ong’esa, an elderly Kenyan man in the new documentary, Protection: Men and condoms in the time of HIV and AIDS. 'Because AIDS has not been sufficiently explained to people, and that if you use condoms you can prevent it,' replies a young man participating in a baraza (community meeting) called to discuss the devastating impact HIV is having on their village.

Three projects fighting malaria and tuberculosis in Mali have seen their international funding suspended as government found 'evidence of misappropriation and unjustified expenditure'. This was reported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world's dominant financier of programmes to fight these diseases.

African nations can break dependence on food imports and produce enough to feed a growing population within a generation despite extra strains from climate change, a study said last Thursday. About 70 per cent of Africans are involved in agriculture but almost 250 million people, or a quarter of the population of the poorest continent, are undernourished. The number has risen by 100 million since 1990.

The urgency and importance of all humans having a right to food security was spelled out by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating that 'everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food...' Inhabitants of Bamako, Mali do not yet benefit from these rights. Mali is amongst the one of the poorest countries in the world. With a population estimated at about 1,8 million people, Bamako the largest city and capital of Mali and it is currently believed to be the fastest growing city in Africa.

Bacharou Gorel had 300 head of cattle before the food security crisis began in Niger. Today he has only 53 left. From Tilabéri in the west, through the central region of Maradi, and into Diffa in the far east of the country, no region has been spared this massive loss of livestock, according to Harouna Abarchi, from AREN (the Association for the Revival of Livestock in Niger), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

Health officials’ fears that insecurity and a lack of resources could lead to fresh outbreaks of preventable diseases are being proved painfully accurate in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Polio - thought to have been eradicated in DRC five years ago – has made a frightening reappearance in Central Africa. The World Health Organisation has officially recorded 139 cases in the country this year, but poor data collection means many more may have been missed.

At least a third of South African children who died in 2007 were severely malnourished and a further 30 per cent were underweight for age while on average over half were known or suspected to be HIV infected. These and other statistics are contained in the 2010 South African Health Review (SAHR), an annual measure of the country’s health status.

International intellectual property rights are increasingly serving the needs of the global pharmaceutical industry, write John Christensen and Khadija Sharife.

Food production will have to increase by 70 per cent to feed the expected world population of 9 billion by 2050, says a report released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Agricultural output in developing countries will have to double, the report says. This will have to be done when rural poverty is still widespread across many developing countries.

At first glance Zimbabwe's public health system has undergone a renaissance since the dire days two years ago when shortages of drugs, staff and equipment were the norm. But this was not the norm, said John Mushangi, 42, an insurance broker who rushed his 15-year-old son to the facility after he was hit by a car and suffered head injuries. 'We waited for more than three hours before being attended and during that time my son was bleeding heavily. There was no reason for the hospital staff to take so long because there were few patients in front of us [in the queue],' he told IRIN.

The South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) has become a 'talkshop' that is failing to lead the country’s fight against AIDS because it is poorly resourced, lacks leadership and there is confusion over its role. This is according to civil society groups and several sources working within the body, which was set up in 2000 to co-ordinate the country’s response to HIV.

Over 600 new cases of AIDS were recorded during the first nine months of 2010 in Algeria, where the disease has spread relentlessly since the outbreak began in 1985. 'According to the likeliest estimates, there are between 21,000 and 30,000 people living with the virus,' Dr Skander Abdelkader Soufi announced November 24th at an Algiers forum on HIV/AIDS.

The Children’s Resources Centre, Black Sash, COSATU (Western Cape), the National Consumer Forum and five individual bread consumers have launched the second class action ever undertaken in South Africa. They are seeking damages for consumers to recoup financial losses from bread producers over the increase of bread prices. 'The outcome of the investigations by the Competition Authorities, upon which the merits of our case are based, confirmed what we already suspected and feared: that the increase on bread prices was not some unfortunate occurrence caused by unpredictable weather patterns or the fluctuating price of fuel. Instead, the increase was the result of a series of immoral decisions by companies less concerned about the livelihoods of consumers than about squeezing out competitors, breaking the law, and making profit.'

A group of Ugandan organisations and individuals have made an urgent appeal to civil society to support the inclusion of sexual minorities in national health policy.