This report examines the impact of the cancellation of Global Fund Round 11 funding and subsequent changes in Global Fund policies and practices relating to HIV and drug use programmes. It focuses on how future HIV and harm reduction programming will be affected by the Global Fund’s current funding crisis given the very low existing levels of funding for such programming.

Website Africa Focus has a feature on HIV/AIDS and health as a human right. 'In the last 15 years, AIDS activists and medical professionals, in Africa and around the world, have won the recognition that the fight against AIDS, which disproportionately affects the African continent, is a shared global responsibility. Millions of lives have been saved. But the fight against AIDS and the wider commitment to health as a universal human right is now threatened by AIDS fatigue and austerity politics.'

A two-week-long mass strike by doctors, who demanded a pay rise from hospitals in the Nigerian state of Lagos, has taken a deadly toll on a significant number of patients in need of urgent medical care. Hospital staff say many patients have either died or continue to suffer as the strike by about 1,000 doctors paralysed the medical institutions.

To push genetically engineered crops into Africa, the promoters work hard to ensure lax biosafety laws, ignore the Africa Model Law on Biosafety and ensure lack of transparency while truncating participation.

One day after being sworn in on 2 April, Senegal’s new President Macky Sall reversed months of public denial of the hunger affecting over 800,000 of his people - part of the Sahel-wide crisis affecting 16 million inhabitants - by calling on partners to help the country get food to those in need. UN agencies and NGOs are struggling to raise enough money to get programmes working so they can catch up with the steadily rising number of hungry people.