The United Nations-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has signed a grant agreement with Togo worth $20 million over two years, the first part of a five-year grant that will allow the country to scale-up treatment and care for people living with HIV. “This agreement reflects Togo’s determination to continue its fight against the AIDS epidemic,” said Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund, who travelled to Lomé to sign the agreement.

'Africa and the end of hunger' is an extract from Pambazuka Press's groundbreaking new book . The Food Rebellions! ebook is also available on its own for

In the first case of its kind in Botswana, a woman has successfully sued another woman for publicly revealing her HIV status. The High Court in Lobatse, a city in the southeast, has ruled that Sadi Nokane pay Obakeng Madubela US$1,000 in damages for violating Madubela's right to privacy. Around 55 percent of the population live on two dollars per day.

Risky sexual behaviour has a language of its own on the University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) campus in the capital, Harare. When female students arrive, they join an informal sorority known as the "university spinster association", or USA, while their male counterparts are inducted into the "university bachelor association", or UBA

The Sigma-Tau Pharmaceutical has announced an innovative combination therapy fixed dose to fight Malaria, the disease that is responsible for 250 million cases worldwide and causes more than 880,000 deaths, especially among children under 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, malaria was endemic in 109 countries, 45 of them in Africa.

This bulletin, published by the Population Reference Bureau, provides a sketch of urban health in developing countries, documenting the intra-urban differences in health for a number of countries and showing how the risks facing the urban poor compare with those facing rural villagers. It begins with an overview of the multiple dimensions of urban poverty and a summary of internationally comparable evidence on the urban health differentials associated with poverty.

As the rich Group of 8 (G8) nations convene in L'Aquila, Italy this week, world hunger will once again take center stage. The United States will likely announce a "significant" increase in funding for agricultural development aid, along with multi-year commitments from other G8 countries. This follows the G8's admission of failure in tackling hunger at its first-ever farm conference in Treviso, Italy in April 2009.

Responding to , Ife Kilimanjaro says actions speak louder than words when it comes to defining the future.

Demand for medical male circumcision has been rising in Kenya's south-western Nyanza Province since it became available as part of a package of HIV prevention services in November 2008. Although local communities do not traditionally practice male circumcision, intensive sensitization programmes by governmental and non-governmental organizations are boosting acceptability.

This report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) outlines the community-based approach to the decentralisation of HIV and AIDS services. The Wellspring of Hope was the first programme in Lesotho to provide HIV and AIDS treatment and care through an entire health service area as a result of this initiative.

Establishing and scaling up early infant HIV diagnosis (EID) programmes is feasible in even the most remote parts of Ethiopia, reported Berhanu Gudetta and colleagues in a study at the HIV Implementers’ Meeting, held in Windhoek, Namibia in early June. Renovation of two regional laboratories making DNA PCR testing possible, coupled with the successful use of dried blood spot testing (sometimes referred to as DBS), increased the numbers of infants receiving early diagnosis and consequently improved early initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for infants aged nought to 18 months.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has dealt a body blow to the delivery of health care services in countries hard hit by the disease, new research has found. The National Bureau of Economic Research at Princeton University in the United States compared data from national Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in 14 sub-Saharan African countries – eight in relatively low-prevalence west African countries and the remainder in higher-prevalence east and southern African countries.

The governing body of the United Nations trade and development agency has convened a meeting in Geneva to highlight the need to keep the food crisis affecting Africa from being forgotten as governments focus on tackling the global economic downturn. While the food crisis may not be making the headlines it did last year, food security is still a major concern in many African countries, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General has highlighted the benefits of investing in agriculture, which she stressed is the key to a brighter future for Africa and its people. “Since time immemorial, agriculture has been the cornerstone of development in every region, not just in Africa,” Asha-Rose Migiro told participants at the African Union Assembly in Sirte, Libya.

It has become a given – test more people for HIV and you'll get more people on treatment earlier, plus cut down on risky sex. But recent research on the behaviour of people who test HIV negative, has led some doctors to question the testing gospel. Speaking at the monthly meeting of the South African HIV Clinicians society, Dr Francois Venter said what seemed a strong relationship between increased testing, treatment and behaviour change is not necessarily valid in the South African context.

Developing drought- and parasite-resistant sorghum hybrids are just some of the achievements of 2009 World Food Prize Laureate Gebisa Ejeta, a professor of agronomy at US-based Purdue University. The Ethiopian scientist — announced as the 2009 Laureate on 11 June — was responsible for Africa's first drought tolerant and high-yielding hybrid sorghum varieties, which improved crop productivity and birthed a commercial sorghum seed industry in Sudan.

What drives the enormous burden of AIDS-related care which falls on women and girls? What strategies are needed to reduce this burden? Rather than focusing only on ways to increase men's participation in shouldering a more equitable share of the burden of AIDS-related care, this paper by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women starts out with an analysis of the structural forces that affect how AIDS care is provided.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has said more must be done to ensure governments include refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) in their national strategies for dealing with HIV/AIDS. In a wide-ranging address Monday afternoon to the UNAIDS governing body, the Programme Coordinating Board (PCB), Guterres said people on the move – whether refugees, IDPs or migrants – can be more vulnerable to HIV.

Forty percent of patients with HIV in Uganda only have their infection diagnosed when they are already ill because of HIV, or have developed AIDS, investigators report in a study published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. The authors believe that this figure is likely to represent the lower bound for number of patients diagnosed late.

Some three million people face hunger in Zimbabwe, despite a significant rise in food production, the UN says. Good rainfall over the past year has boosted production of the staple crop, maize, by 130% to 1.1m tonnes.But about 2.8m people will still face food shortages this year, warned the report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme.