Malawi will not make it an official policy to promote and encourage circumcision among men as a way of preventing the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, two government officials announced. 'We have no scientific evidence that circumcision is a sure way of slowing down the spread of AIDS,' said Dr. Mary Shaba, Principal Secretary for HIV and AIDS in the Office of the President and Cabinet.

Experts worry that African governments are failing to take the threat of HIV seriously enough by not dedicating enough of their resources to prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) efforts. For Graça Machel, Chair of the Campaign to End Pediatric AIDS (CEPA) Council, the struggle to stop the spread of the disease is a matter of inequality.

Proponents of the local food movement like to talk about keeping “food miles” to a minimum. Buying a New Zealand apple in New England is a big no-no. Imagine if instead of stores buying fruit from the South Pacific, the government was buying land in South America to produce “our own” food. Yet that is what’s happening all over the world, as wealthy countries buy or lease large tracts of land in poorer countries for agricultural production and export.

Figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) presented this week revealing a reduction in the world's number of hungry people in 2010 for the first time in 15 years should be a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, the fall is down to short-term improvements in the global economic climate, rather than real, lasting progress in the fight against empty stomachs, says this article.

Campaigners for increased health financing have welcomed the commitment by African Union member states to direct more resources to health. But the needs of the continent seem to dwarf available budgets. Africa, is home to 12 per cent of the world’s population, yet accounts for 22 per cent of the total global disease burden.

The recent Mozambican food and fuel riots raise the spectre of food insecurity and social unrest in the future, writes Saliem Fakir. 'We certainly have the capability to feed all of the world’s population, but the political economy of agriculture, food production and distribution somewhat has a greater influence as to whether people can feed themselves or not.'

Nigeria had a strong agricultural base before the oil boom, but throughout the years its big farms and plantations have been neglected, says this Global Voices article. As a result, Nigeria has become one of the world's biggest importers of food staples, particularly rice and wheat. Even with these imports though, more than a quarter of Nigerians younger than five suffer from malnutrition.

UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation have agreed to hold two further clinical trials on a vaginal gel, which shows promise in reducing the risk of HIV. Experts attending a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa last week decided new trials should be conducted as quickly as possible to confirm preliminary hopeful results.

Poor diagnostics and weak surveillance are hampering government efforts to stem cholera in Nigeria says a government health worker. The disease is most severe in the north; as of 8 September 781 people have died and 13,000 cases were reported.

The recent drop in maternal mortality rates - by about a third worldwide - seems to validate what many health experts have been saying for years: that the strategies for reducing maternal deaths are straightforward and that the missing ingredient has been commitment and resources. Nevertheless, the 2.4 annual rate of decline in maternal death is less than half of what is needed to meet the MDG 5 target.

Community-based care delivered to adults living with HIV by people living with HIV using mobile technologies provided care as safe and effective as clinic-based care, researchers report in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. This prospective community randomised clinical pilot study was conducted in villages surrounding a rural clinic in western Kenya from March 2006 to April 2008.

Following last year’s positive result from an HIV vaccine trial in Thailand the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise has issued a new scientific plan, calling for a speeded-up effort to test new vaccine candidates in large trials.

Many cases of tuberculosis (TB) in patients starting HIV therapy will be missed if screening for the disease relies on 2006 World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, investigators from South Africa report in the October 1st edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

A South African study has found that antiretroviral therapy which includes a cheaper nevirapine-based regimen was as beneficial to the long-term health outcomes of HIV-positive infants’ as the more expensive Protease Inhibitor (PI)-based regimens currently prescribed. The study confirmed that once tests confirmed that the infants’ immune system had successfully suppressed the HI Virus on the more expensive PI regimen, the child could be safely switched to the more affordable nevirapine based regimen. In fact the study showed slightly better outcomes in the children who were switched compared to those who remained on the PI regimen.

The World Development Movement (WDM) has said proposals to establish three new European banking regulators could help prevent food crises, as wheat price rises fuelled by financial speculation trigger bread riots in Mozambique. WDM has been pushing for urgent action to prevent banks and hedge funds engaging in excessive speculation in food derivatives markets, which drove the 2006-2008 food price crisis [1] and is fuelling the recent wheat price spike. Wheat prices have rocketed nearly 70% since January, causing riots in Mozambique this week in which seven people have died.

Kenyan children in acute and chronic pain suffer needlessly because of government policies that restrict access to inexpensive pain medicines, a lack of investment in palliative care services, and inadequately trained health workers, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The 78-page report, "Needless Pain: Government Failure to Provide Palliative Care for Children in Kenya," found that most Kenyan children with diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS are unable to get palliative care or pain medicines. Kenya's few palliative care services provide counseling and support to families of chronically ill patients, as well as pain treatment, but lack programs for children.

The recent Mozambican food and fuel riots raise the spectre, in general, about food insecurity and social unrest in the future. We certainly have the capability to feed all of the world’s population, but the political economy of agriculture, food production and distribution somewhat has a greater influence as to whether people can feed themselves or not.

Ethiopia's Director General of the Environmental Protection Authority, Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, is among the 15 world-class experts named to serve in the Food and Agric Organisation (FAO) food security committee. Egziabher and the other experts will serve in the FAO High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) Steering Committee.

The prices of foodstuffs have risen in Guinea-Bissau since mid-August, the chairman of the Association of Consumers of Goods and Services (ACOBES), Bambo Sanha, has said. The price of a bag of 50 kg of rice, the basic food in the country, increased from 12,000 to 14,000 FCFA, while that of the 50 kg of sugar increased from 15,000 to 27,000 FCFA, he said in Bissau.

Cameroon is currently experiencing one of its most severe outbreaks of cholera in decades. The epidemic began in May 2010, following the country’s rainy season, and is most prevalent in the country’s Extreme North province. To date, there are some 5,560 reported cases of cholera and 385 deaths, according to the Government of Cameroon.