The different explanations given for Africa’s current food crisis seem to miss the real causes of the problem. Mamadou Goita does not believe that the crisis is of an economic nature. Rather, it is the endpoint of the dismantling of Africa’s agricultural sector and its linking to the international market and brutal liberalism. Based on an analysis of the political choices that have contributed to the current situation, notably the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s, Goita proposes solutions and decisions that need to be taken to achieve food sovereignty in Africa.

An initiative by the Tanzanian government hopes to reduce HIV transmission along the country's expanding road network by targeting construction crews and the communities that surround them. "The government requires that road construction companies implement HIV prevention services for their workers and for the community because this is one way through which HIV can very easily spread in a community," said Moses Kisimo, community HIV/AIDS coordinator in the northeastern district of Tanga. "The strategy is: Construct roads and also prevent the spread of HIV."

Lay counsellors in South Africa can now legally perform HIV tests, but delays in paying them and shortages of test kits are threatening a national campaign to scale up voluntary HIV testing and counselling (VCT). Before new regulations came into effect in May 2010 only nurses were allowed to administer finger-prick HIV tests, but AIDS activists had long argued that this not only added to an already heavy work load, but could also hamstring the VCT campaign aiming to test 15 million South Africans by 2011.

Robust early increases in CD4 cell count reduce the risk of death for patients with HIV, even those who are severely malnourished, investigators from Zambia report in the online edition of AIDS. The large, prospective study showed that an increase in CD4 cell count of less than 100 cells/mm3 six months after starting HIV treatment was associated with an increased risk of mortality, especially for those who were malnourished.

HIV doctors and activists have slammed a male circumcision clamp that is being aggressively marketed in South Africa and the rest of the continent with a small study showing that it is much more painful that the surgical route and has more adverse events. In a joint statement the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society and the Treatment Action Campaign said although they supported the implementation of a country-wide voluntary male medical circumcision (VMMC) programme, they had concerns about the Tara Klamp.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has welcomed Namibia’s decision to remove travel restrictions for people living with the virus, a move that aligns the country’s laws with international public health standards. The new legislation lifting restrictions for people living with HIV/AIDS and other contagious diseases took effect in Namibia on 1 July. Restrictions that limit movement based on HIV-positive status only are discriminatory and violate human rights, according to UNAIDS.

A new study has challenged widely held assumptions about income level in relation to HIV, finding that neither wealth nor poverty are reliable predictors of HIV infection in Africa. Previously, the argument that poverty drove HIV epidemics was supported by the World Bank and UNAIDS, as well as less reliable authorities like former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who told the International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 that the disease was a partner with "poverty, suffering, social disadvantage and inequity".

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A new report, The High Food Price Challenge: A Review of Responses to Combat Hunger, by the UK Hunger Alliance and the Oakland Institute, reveals that a major initiative, launched by the Group of 8 (G8), in July 2009 has failed to address the global hunger crisis, which currently affects more than a billion people.

Governments and international agencies urgently need to boost ecological farming techniques to increase food production and save the climate,” said UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, while presenting the findings at an international meeting on agroecology held in Brussels on 21 and 22 June. Along with 25 of the world’s most renowned experts on agroecology, the UN expert urged the international community to re-think current agricultural policies and build on the potential of agroecology.

The East African Caravan on Maternal Health was launched on July 3rd, 2010 at the Kibera D.O Open Grounds, Kibera, Nairobi. It will travel from Kenya, through Tanzania and Rwanda, before culminating in Uganda just prior to the African Union Summit where African Heads of State and Government will discuss issues of Maternal and Child Health.

Diana Banda* is quickly running out of excuses to give her six-year-old son about why he has to take a schedule of drugs every day. Her son David* is HIV-positive and has been on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) for two years. But he may not learn the truth about his HIV status anytime soon as his mother thinks up one excuse after another as to why he has to religiously take the drugs.

Award-winning French journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is the author of "The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply" (The New Press) and the creator of the film by the same name. In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes: "What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects - the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures - of Western society's economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet.

Without a major breakthrough in preventing and treating diabetes, the number of cases in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double, reaching 24 million by 2030, according to the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation (IDF). A recent study, Diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa, led by the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon and published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, said inadequate donor attention and national prevention programmes were creating a global "public health and socioeconomic time bomb".

Binti Omar waits anxiously for her HIV test in a tent erected as part of a testing drive being conducted by the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) in the coastal city of Mombasa; Omar is accompanied by her fiancé, Abubakar Ismael, and his two wives. "I'm about to be part of Abu's larger family, so we found it necessary to come here and get ourselves tested so that we can plan our future much better," Omar said. "Life nowadays is so risky... It would be good for us all to get to know each other's HIV status."

The food crisis in Niger is deteriorating faster than expected and could cost the lives of a generation, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) said. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the organisation, said the brains and bodies of children under five will be damaged for life if they don't have adequate nutrition. The drought-stricken Sahel region in West Africa - encompassing Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Mali - is facing dwindling food supplies and high prices at market.

Zimbabwean researchers in HIV&AIDS are afraid of including the homosexual and intarvenous drug using communities in the national HIV&AIDS priority research document they are working on because of the criminalization of these areas by the country’s government. These two areas among other minority groups are key drivers of HIV&AIDS and researchers said there was need for the nation to prioritize them and have national campaign programs targeted at them.

Two leading HIV researchers say that countries worst affected by HIV should test whether promoting a national month of sex abstinence could slow the spread of HIV, by interrupting the chain of transmission during the primary, highly infectious stage of HIV infection. Professor Alan Whiteside of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD) at the University of Kwazulu-Natal and Dr Justin Parkhurst of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) say that if mathematical modelling shows the idea to have possibilities, national campaigns to test the hypothesis should follow.

It has been revealed that between 10 to 15 percent of Cameroonians suffer from Hepatitis B, C and D. This gives a total population of over two million Cameroonians. This revelation was made recently during celebrations marking the World Day of Viral-Hepatitis in Yaounde under the auspices of the Minister of Public Health, Andre Mama Fouda.

The MSMGF is pleased to announce the launch of our newest policy brief, HIV Prevention with MSM: Balancing Evidence with Rights-based Principles of Practice. This document details the current context for the development and implementation of HIV prevention efforts targeting MSM, provides an overview of available MSM-specific HIV prevention strategies, and offers a look at recent guidelines from global health institutions. Recommendations emphasize the importance of respecting the role of MSM in efforts to determine research, policy, and program priorities, as well as other core principles of practice that are often overlooked in policy discussions.