15 MAY 2013 – "If spiders' webs can unite, they can tie up a lion." This Ethiopian saying became a reality in the Vikizijula Chiefdom, a small community outside the town of Siphofaneni in Swaziland's Lubombo region. From 5 March to 15 April, women of all ages came together in the chiefdom and built water harvesting tanks to provide potable water for their families.

MBABANE, 13 May 2013 (IRIN) - It was an ambitious plan to circumcise the majority of men in Swaziland, an effort to reduce the risk of HIV transmission in a country with the world's highest HIV prevalence. How could it have gone wrong?

“First they told me that circumcision will not really protect me against HIV. Then they tell me that I cannot have sex for some weeks or months after circumcision. I told them ‘fusaki’ [get out]!” Eric Dlamini, a 22-year-old law student, told IRIN.

MBABANE, Apr 9 2013 (IPS) - For more than a decade after 1992, when Swazi gold miner Benson Maseko, 50, fell ill with chest pains and a nagging cough, he did not seek treatment.

Because of his illness, Maseko was retrenched without benefits from his job at a mine in Johannesburg, South Africa. And when he returned to his home in Mahlangatsha, a small village on the outskirts of Swaziland’s commercial hub, Manzini, he chose to pursue traditional healing for his ailment instead of going to a doctor.

JOHANNESBURG, 25 March 2013 (IRIN) - South Africa's gold mines are estimated to have the highest number of new tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world, making the disease a leading export to neighbouring countries. IRIN takes a look at the declaration meant to change this situation.

In August 2012, heads of state from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) agreed to sign the SADC Declaration on TB in the Mining Sector, following endorsements by their national ministers for health, labour and justice.

MBABANE , Mar 25 2013 (IPS) - Every day for the last four years, 52-year-old Tintfombi Msibi has had to walk past the borehole in her village of Ekuphakameni, one of the driest rural villages in southern Swaziland, to a dirty stream two kilometres away to collect drinking water.

“We’ve been struggling to get water in this community because the borehole the government installed for us broke down,” she told IPS.

Today, the Government of Swaziland launched a framework to mount the final push toward achieving the goal of eliminating new HIV infections among children and improving the health of women within the next two years.

UNICEF reports on programmes in Swaziland that are helping HIV-positive parents lead healthy lives and have HIV-free children.

By Suzanne Beukes

MBABANE, 20 March 2013 (IRIN) - Swaziland’s government has sold maize donated by the Japanese government to feed hungry Swazis for US$3 million and deposited the money in the Central Bank of Swaziland.

The nearly 12,000 metric tons of donated maize was sold by the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development in 2011, but the sale was not made public until an item about the transaction appeared in a performance report the ministry presented to the Swaziland Parliament for review last week.

JOHANNESBURG, 31 January 2013 (IRIN) - Thembikosi Gumedze, the curator of the national seed bank in cash-strapped Swaziland, has been unable to supply much-needed drought-tolerant food crop seeds to farmers for more than two years.

He has not been able to source the US$7,000 to $10,000 a year needed to produce enough seeds to distribute to the country's smallholder population.

COPENHAGEN, 3 January 2013 – To help improve global access to new vaccines that protect children against the leading killers of pneumonia and diarrhoea, UNICEF is inviting manufacturers to participate in a tender that will help establish affordable, sustainable supplies of Pneumococcal conjugate and Rotavirus vaccines for Middle Income Countries from 2013 to 2015.

The tender also calls for manufacturers’ proposals for the Human Papillomavirus vaccine to protect against the main cause of cervical cancer.