HIV activists have accused the United States and European governments of betraying their commitments to assist poorer nations fund treatment for those needing HIV treatment. “2010 is meant to be the year when we achieve universal access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) as set out in the Millennium Development Goals. But across Africa less than half of people in need of ART are accessing it. Despite this, the United States and Europe are retreating on their commitments to support HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care. Their failure to honour these commitments will result in millions of avoidable deaths across sub-Saharan Africa,” the activists said.

In a slow-motion disaster predicted months ago by aid agencies, Africa's Sahel region is lurching towards a food crisis which the world has only weeks left to avert. Yet even if more aid is pledged right now, the obstacles in getting succour to the most vulnerable and remote communities on the planet mean hundreds of thousands of children in Niger and Chad are already facing life-threatening hunger.

Cholera outbreak in Uganda has killed at least 10 people leaving 20 hospitalized in Uganda's Kayunga district, officials said Thursday. The epidemic that broke out June 4 at the Kawongo landing site was due to poor sanitation, Edrisa Musisi, district health officer, said.

A persistent budget shortfall means that more than 120 million people in Nigeria and Ghana could remain at risk of contacting yellow fever if not reached with vaccinations, United Nations agencies and their partners cautioned. Funding shortages are threatening the global supply of the immunization, which means the two West African nations could be left off the list for upcoming campaigns, according to the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Yellow Fever Vaccine Provision, of which the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) are members.

Twenty South African boys have died following botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape Province. "The deaths occurred over the past 12 days, with nine of them occurring over the past 24 hours," said a provincial health spokesperson. Some 60 boys have been rescued from 11 initiation schools which have since been closed. Circumcision is seen as a rite of passage into manhood in some South African communities

Over 50 million people in Africa and elsewhere in target countries benefited from loans of the Food Facility, a special instrument with a budget of 1 billion euros, established a year ago by the European Union (EU) to face the food crisis in developing countries, official sources said. According to a document, made available to the media, 65,000 children received supplemental nutrition care through the loans of the Food Facility, managed by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Kenyan Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta presented the national budget for the 2010-2011 financial year to parliament on 10 June. The budget sees a near doubling of past allocations for HIV treatment, earmarking Ksh. 900 million (US$ 11.25 million) for antiretroviral treatment. Earlier this year UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé jointly launched the country’s National AIDS Strategic Plan (2010- 2013) with the Prime Minister, Right Honorable Raila Odinga.

In Africa’s Sahel region, even in years of adequate rainfall food insecurity is usually high. Now, as the region enters the precarious “lean season” (the period between harvests that lasts from May to August), the problem is expected to get worse. In recent months, rains have been erratic and scarce, in turn significantly diminishing the crops produced by farmers. Entire communities are without sufficient food reserves to survive until the next harvests in September.

An experimental treatment for Ebola that could potentially save human lives has been shown to be completely effective in monkeys. If approved for human use it would be the first treatment for the deadly disease, according to Thomas Geisbert, a microbiologist at the US-based National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Institute.

A recent march by over a thousand Ghanian Muslims against “the growing activities of gays and lesbians” in this West-African country, could hamper initiatives that target Men having sex with Men (MSM), such as HIV and Aids interventions, activists have warned. Mac-Darling Cobbinahof the Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights Ghana, an organisation that also caters for the MSM community said, following a march that went through principal streets of the Metropolis against homosexuality, after an alleged report that close to 60 gays and lesbians from eastern

TB patients who have knowledge regarding the relationship between TB and HIV or have been counselled on HIV are more likely to report having used a condom during sexual intercourse, according to a study presented at the 2nd South African TB conference held in Durban last week.

Researchers have started testing the safety a vaginal ring containing an antiretroviral drug in South Africa in the hope that it has the potential to prevent HIV infection in women. The clinical trial, known as IPM 015 will test the safety and acceptability of the dapivirine-containing vaginal ring – which is successfully used in Europe as a delivery method for hormonal therapy and birth control.

This AGRA Watch position paper takes a closer look at the Lugar-Casey bill, ‘a case study in the interlocking interests of big business, big philanthropy, US foreign policy and US aid’. It also highlights new developments, both in Kenyan legislation and in the international political economy that ‘threaten to use the global food crisis as an opening to solidify genetic engineering as a necessary part of food security strategies.’

In the wake of Israel’s attack on aid ships bound for Gaza on 31 May, Natasha Shivji contrasts the oceanic activities of Somali pirates with the recent measures taken by Israeli security forces in maintaining Israel's siege of Gaza. East Africa ‘must straighten the international law that has been manipulated to condemn our people’, writes Shivji.

The excitement over the FIFA World Cup is not just about football, it's also about the party. Large quantities of alcohol are sure to be consumed as foreign football fans rub shoulders with locals, and inhibitions are likely to fall away. The World Cup has long been associated with boom times for the sex trade, but in a country where one in five adults is living with HIV, the price of throwing caution to the wind and having unprotected sex with a local, let alone a sex worker, could be extremely high.

Stocks of millet and sorghum in northern Nigeria's markets are dwindling as traders buy them up to export across the border to Niger, where some 10 million people face food insecurity. Grain merchants from Niger head to Dawanau market in Kano - West Africa's largest grain market – to buy truck-loads of millet and sorghum, locally known as Guinea corn, to bolster declining food stocks.

A Ugandan draft policy recommending that HIV-positive children be informed of their status by the age of 10 has drawn mixed reactions from health workers. The previous policy required parental consent to tell children under the age of 12, but the new policy allows health workers - with the support of parents and guardians - to disclose HIV status after the child has been prepared and an assessment of their ability to understand and deal with the condition has been made.

HIV-positive individuals who are obese or overweight are less likely to die or develop tuberculosis than people with HIV who are of normal weight, South African investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. “Our findings show a clear protective effect…of increasing BMI [body mass index] on both all-cause mortality and incident TB [tuberculosis] in a South African cohort”, comment the investigators, “person with obese and overweight BMI have a significantly decreased risk of both mortality and TB.”

An amendment to the Health Act allowing counselors to draw blood for HIV testing will see more people being tested. Head of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, Dr Francois Venter said unclear policy on whether counselors could test for HIV meant there were less people allowed to conduct the testing and less people being tested.

African health ministers and representatives of international agencies have gathered today in Marrakesh, Morocco, at a meeting organized by the United Nations and its partners to discuss the impact of influenza on the continent. “We know that influenza has a significant impact on morbidity and mortality throughout Africa, but unfortunately, we don’t have a great deal of data that shows this,” said Keiji Fukuda, Special Adviser on Pandemic Influenza to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).