Swazi HIV patients 'eat cow dung'

Some HIV-positive patients in Swaziland are so poor they are eating cow dung to fill their stomachs and make anti-retroviral drugs effective, activists say. Read the story on the BBC news website here.

Tiny blood card offers easy tests

A cheap and portable blood test could provide a breakthrough for diagnosing infections in remote areas, a study in the journal Nature Medicine says. Read the story on the BBC website here. The U.S developed device will cost about 60p and has shown almost 100% accuracy in tests for HIV and Syphilis in Rwanda.

The researchers hope the device will boost testing of pregnant women, especially in Africa.

Barely a quarter of pregnant women in low and middle income countries are tested for HIV, a figure which provides scant hoping of reaching the United Nations goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015, according to the 2010 UNAids Report on the Global Aids Epidemic.

In Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only nine and six percent, respectively, of pregnant women currently receive HIV testing, according to the report.

What happens when aid is withdrawn from a state In political turmoil?

The Guardian poverty blog has a useful article looking at aid and poverty in contrasting locations.

There are a number of other stories here examining the links between poverty, aid and development. Definitely worth a look!

Patterns of disease

The page here gives patterns of disease for TB, Malaria, cholera and HIV/Aids.