Federal Government has said henceforth, patients attending Federal Government Hospitals can now report on the quality of services through SMS. With the support of MTN and Glo GSM Networks, who are providing the platform with which the service are being provided, the Federal Ministry of Health said it is poised to check the activities of quacks through the Patients' Feedback Platform with the generic shortcode 30500.

Kenyan women are becoming infected with HIV during pregnancy at very high rates, and repeat testing prior to delivery, or at the earliest possible opportunity after birth, should be encouraged in order to reduce mother-to-child transmission, Kenyan researchers reported last week at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in San Francisco.

A severe shortage of highly-trained medical personnel is one of the many challenges to providing health care at a local level across Africa. Task shifting - permitting less-specialized people to carry out certain functions - is one proposal to over come this, but it is meeting resistance.

An online petition containing more than 450,000 signatures has been presented to the Uganda Parliament, urging members to withdraw a proposed bill that, if passed, would broaden the criminalization of homosexuality in the East African country and introduce the death penalty in certain cases.

A new initiative to bring environmental and financial benefits to local communities in the impoverished highlands of Ethiopia has been announced in Ethiopia. The Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project is Africa's first large-scale forestry project to be registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. It will bring both economic and social benefits to poor communities in Ethiopia as well as environmental benefits as the project will cut an estimated 880,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 30 years.

The government of Sierra Leone has announced that from Independence Day (27 April) it will abolish user fees for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five, but will this, on its own, improve their lot?

Africa's economic growth could be held back for another generation unless global investors help the world's poorest continent to improve its unreliable energy networks, a British minister has said.

This year's 8th Annual Digital Africa Summit is set to be Africa’s premier ICT business summit, creating more opportunities for learning, partnerships and business, with ICT’s, telephony and broadband being globally recognized as a prerequisite for social and economic development the opportunity to engage positive change has never been greater.

Three major public-sector unions launched a general strike Wednesday (March 3rd) after two months of negotiations with the government reached an impasse. "We're not fans of strike action," Democratic Labour Federation general secretary Abderrahman Azzouzi said, "but after a two-month halt in the negotiation process, we had to do something."

The 4th International CBA conference (21-27th February) gathered representatives from the developing world to share knowledge and developments in community-based adaptation. The Community Based Adaptation Exchange (CBAX), an IIED and IDS project, collaborated with the AfricaAdapt Network to report from the conference via blogs, photos and videos. The coverage of the event has been hosted on the CBA-X platform.

About 27 students, suspended from UMthwalume high school, on suspicion that they are homosexuals, have been allowed back in school. This was a result of a meeting between parents of suspended learners, the school governing body and the Department of Education of Ugu Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has signed a grant agreement of US$8 million with the Republic of The Gambia to improve the production and marketability of livestock and horticulture products, specifically targeting rural women and youth nationwide.

HIV stakeholders are calling on the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to speed up the registration of critical anti-HIV medication or face legal action. The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society has sent an appeal to the health minister to intervene and address the MCC registration process which they describe as the single biggest obstacle to getting affordable access to medicines.

A study presented at the recent Seventeenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections founds that Ugandans presenting at a TB clinic grossly overestimated the likelihood that they had HIV. It also found that those who thought they had HIV were significantly less likely to refer members of their household for HIV testing than those who did not think so.

Maghreb countries should abandon protectionism in order to boost lagging regional trade, according to participants in a recent conference on economic integration organised by Tunisia's Foreign Ministry. The conference on Maghreb Economic Integration, which was held on February 17th to mark the 21st anniversary of the establishment of the Maghreb Union, was attended by high-ranking Tunisian officials, businessmen and professors.

Education - particularly the education of girls - is fundamental to development, and is increasingly recognized as not only a national but also a global responsibility. The recent international effort called the Fast Track Initiative has significantly expanded basic education, notes Oxfam International in a new report.

Al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist opposition group, has announced it will stop World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Somalia. The armed group said on Sunday that food distributed by the UN agency had disadvantaged local farmers and accused the WFP of being politically motivated.

Medical male circumcision is now widely recognized as an important HIV prevention tool, and several African countries have included it in their national HIV strategies. IRIN/PlusNews lists the progress of 13 nations in eastern and southern Africa identified as priority countries for male circumcision scale-up by the UN World Health Organization.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has accused leaders from across Kenya's political divide and businessmen over their role in the post-election violence. Details of Mr Moreno-Ocampo’s submission to the Pre-Trial Chamber show how the suspects planned and executed what he refers to as a “criminal policy” against civilians.

The UN has begun talks with Democratic Republic of Congo on withdrawing its peacekeeping mission - the biggest UN operation in the world. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said his officials would take a month to assess how the pullout of 20,500 personnel could be carried out.