The cost of vegetables, fish, and white meat continues to rise in Morocco. With inflation starting to bite, citizens see the price spike as incomprehensible and exorbitant. The price of some items has almost doubled within one month. These include chicken and sardines, which are very popular with Moroccans. The market price of chicken and sardines has risen from 14 and 10 dirhams respectively at the beginning of March, to 20 and 19 dirhams respectively.

The court of appeal in Senegal has freed nine gay men imprisoned in January 2009 for “acts against nature and the creation of a criminal organisation.” An international outcry followed the convictions of the men, who were members of an HIV prevention organisation. They were arrested at the home of an HIV outreach worker near the Senegalese capital Dakar in December 2008. Condoms and lubricant were confiscated by the police as evidence of “improper and unnatural acts.”

South Africa will face tough choices in the years ahead as its government strives to extend treatment to all who need it through the public health system, a leading health economist told the Fourth South African AIDS Conference earlier this month. Dr Susan Cleary, the director of the Health Economics Unit at the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health and Family Medicine, outlined the financial dilemma that South Africa will face in the coming decade as the number on HIV treatment grows.

Public sector doctors are preparing for a national strike should government fail to table satisfactory salary proposals at today’s (Friday 24th) crucial bargaining council meeting. On Thursday, doctors at Chris Hani Baragwanath, the biggest hospital in the country, joined at least 24 other hospitals in industrial action by declaring an immediate go-slow.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc is about to start final-stage clinical trials of the world's most advanced malaria vaccine, which could reach the market within three years, the British-based drugmaker said on Friday. If successful, Glaxo believes its Mosquirix vaccine has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of deaths and prevent tens of millions of cases of malaria in Africa.

The cholera epidemic in southern Africa continues to abate, but international and local health authorities stress the need to remain vigilant, the United Nations has reported. “Overall, the duration and magnitude of the epidemic underscores the need for strengthening surveillance, preparedness and underscores plans in all countries,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The African First Ladies Health Summit concluded with a commitment by these influential women to use their positions to improve maternal health, stop the AIDS epidemic and promote girls’ education. The two-day summit attracted first ladies from more than a dozen African nations and a wide range of supporters from diverse organizations and corporations.

High food prices persist in developing countries despite an improved global cereal supply situation and a sharp decline in international food prices, FAO has warned in its latest Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. This is creating further hardship for millions of poor people already suffering from hunger and undernourishment.

The Swazi government's slow response to a fast-growing tuberculosis epidemic has eroded the possibility of controlling it. Themba Dlamini, the National TB Control Programme manager, says there has been a nearly ten-fold increase in the last 20 years from about 1 000 TB cases per year in 1987 to over 9,600 cases in 2007. Swaziland also has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate; people living with HIV/AIDS are significantly more vulnerable to catching tuberculosis.

The World Health Organizat ion (WHO) has announced that Zambia had achieved a major reduction in malaria mortality through accelerated malaria control activities, joining several other African countries in the crusade to eradicate the disease. Malaria deaths reported from health facilities have declined by 66% in Zambia and this result, along with other data, indicates that Zambia has reached the 2010 Roll Back Malaria target of more than 50% reduction in malaria mortality compared to 2000, said WHO.

cc The right to food, as an enforceable human right, should be at the centre of our efforts to reform the global food system, writes UN special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter in a statement to the United Nations General Assembly. A right to food means that ‘victims must have a right to recourse mechanisms; that governments must be held accountable if they adopt policies which violate that right; and that courts are empowered to protect this right’ writes De Schutter. He argues that ‘the daily and massive denial of the right to food has its source, not in an insufficient quantity of food produced, but in a system of production whose limits have now become clear.’ De Schutter calls for support for states, an assessment of different models of agricultural production, the redesign of trade, improvements in the situation of agricultural workers and incentives and regulations for agri-food companies, with a view to realising the right to food.

In their continued posturing about what their sides of the coalition deserve or what the opposite side does not deserve, one reads Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga's cavalier flirtations with calamity. This seemingly comical political game about demands for VIP toilets and red carpet receptions belies a real danger of Kenyans yet again mounting a tiger, only to find ourselves on top of an animal they we can neither control nor get rid of.[1]

Seated at his cluttered desk in the offices of Congo's National AIDS Council (CNLS), Franck Fortuné Mboussou is a very happy man. In a country where barely 10 percent of the female population has ever been tested for HIV, the organisation finally has enough money to buy a mobile testing unit.

People living with HIV in Uganda's northern region are facing critical shortages of essential medicines. Dr Paul Onek, director of health services in Gulu District, said supplies of malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and antiretroviral (ARV) drugs had all run out. "We last received TB drugs in January for only 400 TB patients."

Anecdotal evidence that entrenched cultural beliefs among Swazis actively encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS has been confirmed by a joint government and UN report. The study by UN the Population Fund (UNFPA) and Swaziland's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare - The State of the Swaziland Population - echoes warnings by local NGOs that "AIDS cannot be stopped unless there is a change in people's sexual behaviour."

Task-shifting is the key to helping to reach South Africa’s goal of treating at least 80% of those in need of antiretroviral therapy (ART) by 2011, according to a joint statement by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Reproductive Health and Research Unit (RHRU) of University of the Witwatersrand, the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, and Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), released at the Fourth South African AIDS Conference in Durban earlier this month.

While SADC countries have made progress in addressing some aspects of HIV/AIDS and human rights laws, most countries are selectively applying international guidelines on HIV/AIDS and human rights. This is according to a report published recently by AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA). The report, which was unveiled at the SA AIDS conference, describes the extent to which SADC countries have implemented the International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights

The killing of Oscar Foundation Director Kamau King'ara and his deputy, Paul Oulu, brings nearer the surface a war on Mungiki that has gone on in the underground for many months and now opens a new, dangerous front with the targeting of civil society leadership. Kamau and Oulu were gunned down by unknown people near the University of Nairobi hostels in broad daylight on March 6, 2009. On that day, Kamau had led a demonstration against extra-judicial executions.

Hodan* spends most of her afternoons sitting outside her tiny house in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, blowing fruity smoke from a hookah pipe, her face covered in a green paste to help her skin look its best. She does not trawl the streets looking for customers; most of her clients make appointments to visit her at home. In this conservative Muslim country, commercial sex work is practised out of sight. Hodan says not even her neighbours know how she makes a living and if they ever found out, she is sure they would evict her immediately.

The ANC is planning a post-election apology to the nation for former president Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous HIV-Aids policy, which has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of infected people, according to a report in The Times. “We owe it to the nation. We, as MPs, were there and we failed to rise up,” said an ANC MP.