An international AIDS vaccine conference held in Boston, in America, discussed the importance of community participation in the search for a preventative AIDS vaccine. Jim Maynard of the HIV Trials Network says the development of a vaccine will succeed or fail depending on the buy-in of community members in every society. 'I don’t think the vaccine work can progress at all without the community. It’s asking a huge sacrifice from any community, saying: "We’d like to work with your people and try something that we hope will save millions of lives, but we don’t know because it is experimental’". And, if you’re going to ask something that big of them, the community can then say: "How will this help our community? If you do succeed in this vaccine, will we get access to this vaccine?"'

It is a long-standing tradition in many African countries to frown upon the selling of land. When land is snapped up by large agribusiness interests in these countries, it is experienced as a brutal violation of this tradition, one that compromises the lives and livelihoods of entire generations to come. This phenomenon of large-scale land appropriation really took off with the food crisis of 2008. As the many cases of land grabbing identified in West and Central Africa have demonstrated, profit seems to be the only motive pursued. The whole model is inimical to - really a frontal attack on - the goals of food sovereignty, which is fundamentally about human survival, especially in African countries that are still largely rural. Read the rest of this GRAIN article by clicking on the link provided.

Striking doctors have accused the government of failing to seek an end to their salary demands, saying it had not responded to their proposal on a return-to-work deal. The chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacist and Dentists Union Dr Victor Ng’ani said their mediator, the Kenya Medical Association had sent the recommendations on Friday, but the government did not respond. In the document, the striking doctor’s recommended the forming of a sub-committee to convert a task force report on improvement of health infrastructure, into a policy paper and the absorption of self-sponsored registrars into government.