South Africa’s top scientists and researchers have come out in support of health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi after the furore over Home Affairs supplied AIDS death statistics he quoted recently - which may have been incorrect.

South African agricultural policy is obsessed with market driven agricultural models while disproportionately high numbers of our people remain hungry. This is a hangover from our historical legacy, which continues in the form of internal and external neo-liberal pressures on government to conform to the tyranny of the market.

The South African government has announced that it will provide treatment for all HIV-positive babies in a significant policy shift for the country which has been ravaged by the pandemic.

HIV/AIDS remains a major health and development challenge in Africa. According to the 2009 AIDS Epidemic Update by the UNAIDS and World Health Organization, 22.4 million Africans live with HIV/AIDS. At least 1.9 million Africans contracted HIV in 2008 and 1.4 million died of AIDS in the same year. Every day in Africa, about 5200 Africans contract HIV and at least 3800 Africans die of AIDS.

One of the key settings that is often a point of contact for women, including survivors of violence and HIV positive women, is health systems. It is for this reason that it is critical that an essential package of services delivered should be part of a comprehensive response to the two interlinked crises of HIV and violence against women and girls. What does this entail?

A new Ugandan study adds to a growing body of evidence that providing home-based antiretroviral (ARV) care in low-income settings can be as effective as facility-based interventions.

The United Nations Project on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and World Health Organisation (WHO) AIDS Global Epidemic update shows that sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV. In addition, the number of new infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has increased massively since 2001, and HIV incidence amongst gay men remains high in western countries.

Increasing access to antiretroviral therapy is starting to have a major impact on the global AIDS epidemic, according to a report released by UNAIDS and WHO. Prevention is also having an impact on new infections, although some of the decline in new infections is due to the natural course of the epidemic.

South Africa has moved swiftly to develop a male circumcision plan that would have buy-in from all stakeholders and will go beyond being a purely medical intervention, ideally also engaging men on among others HIV prevention, gender issues and alcohol abuse.

HIV prevention efforts - and the promise of antiretroviral therapy as prevention - are being undermined by punitive laws targeting those infected with and at risk of HIV, Human Rights Watch has said on the eve of World AIDS Day.

Health authorities in Zimbabwe announced that the country would get US$180 million from the Global Fund to fight HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's top governing body has cleared the way for setting up a stronger and more effective system of global food security governance.

What can be done to ensure that the poorest Africans have access to a healthcare system that charges user fees? Many options have been proposed to address this situation, but currently the decision-makers involved have little or no access to these. To support them in their reflection, a team of researchers from the University of Montreal, with support from the international NGO HELP (Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe e.V.), has produced a thorough compilation of all existing knowledge on this subject, in four bilingual policy briefs.

‘Food sovereignty is the real solution to the tragedy of hunger in our world’, representatives from social movements, NGOs and CSOs have said in a declaration issued at a forum parallel to the World Summit on Food Security, which was held in Rome from 13-17 November 2009. The declaration asserts that ‘all people have a right and responsibility to participate in deciding how food is produced and distributed’ and that ‘governments must respect, protect and fulfil the right to food as the right to adequate, available, accessible, culturally acceptable and nutritious food’. It also sets out a series of civil society commitments to defending food security.

In a report prepared in the run-up to the World Summit on Food Security, which took place in Rome from 13-17 November, Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, called for the negotiation of a declaration that was ‘coherent, ambitious and unambiguous on five issues: The right to food, governance, sustainability, trade, and the strengthening of international cooperation.’ De Schutter noted that the declaration would determine ‘our ability to take the necessary steps towards a global food system that will make decisive progress towards realising the human right to adequate food and building our resilience against the risk of future economic shocks and increasing volatility of food prices’.

As a range of eminent scientists back genetically modified crops as the answer to food security in Africa, Khadija Sharife asks in Pambazuka News whether proponents of the ‘Green Revolution’ have the interests of the continent’s people and the environment at heart, or are more concerned with generating profits for the companies that control the technology.

The Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) is revamping its national HIV information campaign after HIV prevention messages were less successful than hoped. "We shall use basic facts in the messages to communicate effectively because we have realized that the level of knowledge about basic facts on HIV information is quite limited," said Saul Onyango, senior health educationist with the UAC.

When Dorothy*, a single mother of five, told her neighbours in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, she had tuberculosis (TB), she expected sympathy and maybe even offers of help. Instead, she found herself so severely ostracized, she felt she had to move out.

The UN refugee agency, with technical support from the World Food Programme (WFP), has embarked on a school feeding programme to increase classroom attendance and reduce malnutrition at two settlements for Angolan refugees in Zambia.

World leaders who convened in Rome, Italy, for the World Summit on Food Security have unanimously adopted a declaration pledging renewed commitment to eradicate hunger at the earliest date, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Countries also agreed to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture and promote new investment in the sector.