What We’re Reading 5/4/09

May 4th, 2009 12:36 PM UTC
By Chandler Smith

Associated Press: African women often ones who go hungry
Ancient traditions and modern circumstances often combine to place the burden on women to feed their poor families. Researchers say women do as much as 80 percent of the farm work in poor countries. And, with food and fertilizer prices rising, and AIDS and the global financial meltdown taking their toll, women are straining under growing responsibilities. This puts their families at risk, the experts say, because malnourished mothers become malfunctioning mothers.

AllAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: At Last, Good News Comes Out of Country
Last week, Zimbabwe held its first official meeting with Britain in nine years, a development which analysts described as the end of an era of isolation.

AllAfrica.com: South Africa: ‘Third Wave’ of HIV/Aids Deaths Will Be Tsunami
South Africa has yet to experience the third “wave” of its HIV/AIDS epidemic. Wave one, the rapid infection phase, came as early as 1998 when there were perhaps 800000 new infections in one year. Wave two, the high point of HIV-prevalence, did not occur until a decade later, when HIV began “running out of people to infect” and deaths began outstripping new infections. We are now heading for wave three — an extended surge in AIDS deaths — and it is this tsunami of mortality that will truly test the country’s social and political fabric.

-Chandler Smith

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