In a cyclone-prone country like Madagascar, being prepared for disaster makes all the difference. The Malagasy National Disaster Office organizes annual simulation exercises in vulnerable areas to test the preparedness of local authorities and communities. However, in Brickaville, on the east coast of Madagascar, power lines had been down for two weeks and news that the town lay directly in the path of Cyclone Giovanna. The cyclone destroyed and damaged thousands of homes and killed at least 23 people, but this number is expected to rise as more remote locations are reached.

At least 10 people have died after Cyclone Giovanna struck Madagascar but details of its impact on the regions which bore the brunt of the category-four tropical storm remain sketchy, as communications and electricity supplies have been cut. The cyclone made landfall in the early hours of 14 February south of the port town of Toamasina and then carved a path through heavily populated areas towards the capital, Antananarivo, reportedly uprooting trees, damaging infrastructure, causing landslides and flooding as it moved inland.

The party of Marc Ravalomanana has decided to suspend its role in Madagascar's unity government, after a plane carrying the exiled leader home was turned away, a top official said. The main parties on the Indian Ocean island formed a power-sharing government in November, with strongman Andry Rajoelina remaining president until new elections are held, in theory later this year.

For the last seven years, the women of Fitampito have been defying tradition by helping their husbands to farm. Local traditions did not permit women to work the land. But that era is over, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Since women started farming in a few isolated villages in the High Matsiatra region, yields have improved significantly. In three years, rice yields have increased from two tonnes per hectare to five tonnes.

Former Madagascar President Didier Ratsiraka has arrived home from a nine-year exile in France. His return follows the formation of a a unity government in the crisis-hit Indian Ocean island nation. Mr Ratsiraka, 75, has lived in luxurious villa in Paris since 2002 and took part in talks to end the political crisis that has gripped Madagascar since 2009. However, members of his party refused to sign the roadmap to new elections put forward by mediators from the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), pointing out that they could not take part in any political process until their 'chief' returned from France.

Malagasy's new Prime Minister Jean Omer Beriziky has been sworn in at a ceremony in the capital, Antananarivo. Mr Beriziky was chosen by the Indian Ocean island nation’s four main political parties through consensus.

The UN children's fund has denied that there has been a polio outbreak in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. It said that its office in Madagascar had issued a statement last week that led to the mistaken belief there had been an outbreak of wild poliovirus. In fact the last such case was detected on the island in 1997, Unicef said.

Madagascar's de facto premier has resigned along with his cabinet, paving the way for the formation of a new government by consensus, according to a letter. The official letter of resignation was the first step towards ending two years of political stalemate in the country. Albert Camille Vitalis resigned as premier, so a new person could be chosen for the job by November, to create a transitional government that would lead the country to elections in about a year.

In Madagascar the minimum legal age for women to marry is 14 years, and girls under the age of 18 can be married without giving their consent, providing their parents agree. A 2004 UN report estimated that 34 per cent of Malagasy girls between 15 and 19 were married, divorced or widowed, and more than a quarter had at least one child. The organisation Femmes Interessee au Development de Antalaha (FIDA) provides information about reproductive health and better access to contraceptives, but funding is becoming hard to come by.

A surge in new leprosy cases in a remote region of Madagascar could not have come at a worse time. Once a prosperous vanilla-exporting town, Antalaha has suffered the economic consequences of two years of political instability that began with the March 2009 coup in which Andry Rajoelina, with the support of the military, deposed President Marc Ravalomanana. Numerous foreign aid and trade benefits on which the country was heavily reliant, particularly for the funding of social sectors, have since been suspended.

Wikileaks has exposed a US cable examining Marc Ravalomanana's landslide re-election victory which saw him emerging ahead of 13 other candidates with 55 per cent of the vote. 'At the same time, rather than growing more relaxed and comfortable in power, he appears increasingly to see enemies around him, broaching little dissent as he becomes more isolated and autocratic,' says the cable.

In recent years Madagascar has experienced a slow, seemingly unstoppable decline of its fragile economy, that has put a strain on the lives of millions of Malagasy citizens. After two and a half years under the administration of the transitional government of Andry Rajoelina (half a presidential mandate), the economy has been ranked worst in the world by Forbes magazine; thousands have lost their jobs and a food crisis is looming in the southern region of the country. Food crises in the region have been recurrent over the past decade, but an independent United Nations expert has warned that the sanctions imposed on Madagascar have made the situation untenable from a food security standpoint.

About a third of Madagascar’s 20 million people do not have access to water for washing and most of the rest share unsanitary toilet facilities, according to a July 2011 World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) report. The threat of diarrhoea and other diseases is particularly acute in some of the poorer suburbs of the capital Antananarivo. A network of canals, storm water drains and channels criss-crossing the city are choked with rubbish, causing flooding in low-lying areas during the March to November rainy season. In April 2011, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported a worrying rise in pneumonic plague.

Sign TANY's petition calling on the Madagascan government to stop the eviction of families from their land to make way for land grabs.

The bandage covering Olida Soanirina’s eye does not disguise the ravages of hydrocephalus as the three-month-old recovers from an operation at the Joseph Ravoahangy Andrianavalona Hospital (HJRA) in the capital Antananarivo. Hydrocephalus is caused by an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain’s ventricles, with those who suffer from it producing up to seven spoonfuls an hour while the average person produces one. Left untreated, the condition causes the head to swell as pressure increases, leading to disability and a painful death. Treatment in the developing world is difficult because of the high cost of neurosurgery operations.

Right at the bottom of the pyramid are phone users who can’t afford the minimum cost for a SIM to share in someone else’s phone, writes Russell Southwood from Balancing Act. Movirtu has produced a cloud-based, login account which will enable anyone who has access to a GSM phone to share it but still retain their own number. The product was being tested in 2010 and started being deployed as a pilot with several operators in Africa.

At the Centre for Treatment of Acute Malnutrition with Complications (CRENI) in the town of Amboasary Sud in the Anosy region of southeastern Madagascar, Samina Tahiaritsoa, 20, cradles her son, Lambo, 3, who still weighs less than six kilograms after 10 days at the centre. According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), two out of three Malagasy live in poverty and 50 per cent of children younger than five have stunted growth due to malnutrition.

Madagascar, its unique biodiversity and its people, are under threat. French oil company Total is deciding whether to mine highly polluting tar sands in one of the poorest areas of Madagascar. Please act now to help stop this. Email Total’s chief executive today and call on him to abandon his company’s destructive plans.

A human rights campaigner from Madagascar was in the UK recently to demand that the Royal Bank of Scotland withdraw its financing of companies mining tar sands in her country. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has a long track record of financing companies operating in the Canadian tar sands, which are devastating the land and lives of First Nations people in Alberta. The bank has also financed French oil giant Total’s test mining of tar sands in Madagascar over the last three years. Total is expected to decide next month whether to go ahead with larger scale exploitation of tar sands in the country. If it does, the water supply of more than 120,000 people in one of Madagascar’s poorest areas could be disrupted and poisoned and its unique biodiversity severely threatened.

Sceptical about the effectiveness of the ‘roadmap’ being implemented by Madagascar’s ‘de facto authorities’, CCOC (Collective of Citizens and Civic Organizations) has issued a memorandum on resolving the country’s two-year crisis.