Persistent drought compounded by higher than average food prices have created East Africa's worst food crisis in decades. Millions of children face the greatest risks, including severe malnutrition, disease, and death. But official food aid is falling well short of increased needs, particularly in Ethiopia. Across the Horn of Africa, an estimated 20 million people will need emergency humanitarian assistance through the end of this year. In comparison, last year – when drought, high food prices, and conflict were also at issue – only 14 million needed such assistance in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.

Uganda like many other developing countries, suffers from inequitable distribution of health workers between rural and urban areas and between public and private sectors. To strengthen the referral systems, people living with HIV have been trained as Network Support Agents (NSA) to work alongside health care workers in health facilities. This handbook has been designed to help NSAs and other community-based volumteers/providers to be more effective in disseminating standardised HIV and AIDs information at grassroorts levels.

A growing epidemic among child and adolescent survivors of mother-to-child HIV transmission in southern Africa is emerging, highlighting the failure to recognise its development and address the clinical needs of this population, research published in the September 24th issue of AIDS shows. Although there is a high risk of death in the first year of life for infants infected perinatally, children may live with asymptomatic HIV infection for long periods, undiagnosed.

Several health-related budget decisions taken in the past financial year violated the Constitution, the National Health Act, the Public Finance Management Act and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. This is according to a group of activists, researchers, unionists, health workers and academics who have written letters to the ministers of health and finance, expressing grave concern over budgeting practices within the public health system and the dire effect it is shaving on HIV/AIDS, including the antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes.

National governments, in cooperation with international agencies and donors, should reconsider their decision to deport people living with HIV/AIDS, human rights groups said. A report, released by four HIV/AIDS and human rights groups, describes cases in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and the US, in which HIV-positive migrants were deported, saying that there was the need to develop policies guaranteeing uninterrupted treatment for this class of people.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food has presented his second report entitled “Crisis into opportunity: reinforcing multilateralism”, on the global food crisis to the UN Human Rights Council.

Mamadou Goita—Executive Director of the Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD) in Mali—was interviewed at the Salzburg Global Seminar by Susanna Thorpe, of WREN Media. This interview was during a high-level conference entitled “Toward a ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa?” The Salzburg Global Seminar partnered with the Institute of Development Studies and the Future Agricultures Consortium, bringing together stake holders from around the globe, to work on the challenges facing Africa regarding agriculture and farming.

Average life expectancy in Swaziland has plummeted from around 60 years in the 1990s to just over 30 years today. Few would deny that HIV/AIDS is largely to blame, but the reasons why the epidemic has devastated this tiny, southern African country more than any other are less clear. "Foreign observers look at Swaziland and can't figure out why the numbers [of HIV infections] remain so high," said Harriet Kunene, of The AIDS Support Centre in the central commercial town, Manzini.

Carrying placards that read, "Huwezi Die Uki Abstain", Swahili slang for "You won't die if you abstain [from sex]", more than 3,000 young people recently marched through Nairobi in an effort to re-energize the campaign to keep teens from having sex too early. But beyond the placard-waving and slogan-chanting, march organizers were also trying to give young people the skills to avoid being pushed into sex before they are ready.

Floods in northern Nigeria’s Adamawa state have left over 2,000 people displaced, many of them with no access to clean drinking water, leaving officials worried about a potential cholera outbreak. Five districts – Fufore, Demsa, Yola North, Yola South and Numan – were flooded in August and early September, when the River Lagdo burst its banks, according to the Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

The health systems of Sub-Saharan Africa are being undermined by an exodus of medical staff. A new study from Zambia, led by an international team of doctors and researchers, reveals that staff burnout is fuelling the crisis. It shows that even though access to HIV treatment has rapidly expanded, the number of trained staff has not kept pace, meaning that delivering effective HIV care is proving difficult.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/448/58800_think_pink-S_Leone_t… Marke speaks to Cremelda Pratt, the founder of Sierra Leone's , about the need for greater awareness about breast cancer and the future of her foundation.

Food sovereignty, the democratisation of food systems and the trouble with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa are among the topics touched on by Raj Patel and Eric Holt-Giménez, in a lively interview with Pambazuka News about their latest book, .

The International People’s Health University (IPHU) and People’s Health Movement (PHM) in association with the Medical University of Cuba, the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Cuenca (Ecuador) and the Global Forum on Health Research are pleased to announce THE STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH - A short training course from 4-13 November 2009 In Havana, Cuba.

Thousands of African children with sickle cell anaemia are dying needlessly every year from preventable infections, say researchers. About 230,000 children are born every year with sickle cell anaemia in Africa. The genetic disease causes the formation of sickle-shaped red blood cells which block blood vessels, leading to pain, infections and organ damage.

In the high HIV prevalence countries of southern Africa, between five and fifteen men will need to be circumcised to prevent one HIV infection in the ten following years, at a cost of between $150 and $900 per infection prevented. These are the conclusions of an expert review of mathematical models of the impact of male circumcision, organised by UNAIDS, WHO and the South African Centre for Epidemiological Analysis, and published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

Dr Jorge Sampaio, the United Nations Special Envoy on Tuberculosis recently addressed the 59th World Health Organisation Regional Committee for Africa in Kigali, Rwanda. He reminded ministers that putting money in TB is one of the most cost effective public health investments.

Government publishes an ambitious timetable for preparing health institutions for the National health Insurance scheme - but leaves virtually no space for public comment. The public will have very little time to comment on the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, as it will only see the official plan in November.

Although widely derided as an expensive toothless bulldog – and even as a fig leaf for the corrupt – the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) is Kenya’s premiere statutory anti-corruption agency recognized as such by the United Nations Convention against Corruption and the African Union. It has been in operation since 2004 and has investigated among many other pending mega corruption Scandals.

Fertiliser subsidies have received a lot of attention, and praise for success in combating food shortages in Africa. The most notable case is that of Malawi, which introduced a fertiliser subsidy in 2005. In late 2007, the New York Times, for example, published an article hailing Malawi’s success in fighting famine. But in a new research paper, Professor Frank Ellis of the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), argues that while fertiliser subsidies have a number of benefits, they also have limitations, and should not be seen as an alternative for other social protection measures for the poor — most notably, social cash transfers (pensions and child support grants, for example).