Maseru, Lesotho – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced today that it is signing two grant agreements with the Ministry of Finance of Lesotho totaling US$17 million, to allow Lesotho to expand prevention and treatment of HIV and multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

Lesotho has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world, at 24 percent, and the fourth highest estimated TB incidence. The TB-HIV co-infection rates are the fifth highest in the world and multidrug resistant TB is a growing challenge.

New harvests, although reduced, bring some relief to food insecure poor households

KEY MESSAGES

• The end of the lean season ushered in some relief as many poor rural households are now accessing food from their own harvest. Food insecurity outcomes through June are projected to be Minimal (IPC Phase 1) throughout the country as food needs for poor rural households continue to be supplemented with humanitarian assistance.

WASHINGTON, April 18, 2013 – The World Bank today signed an agreement with the Kingdom of Lesotho in Washington for the new Maternal and Newborn Health Performance-Based Financing Project.

The credit of US$12 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), with a grant of US$4 million from the Health Results Innovation Trust Fund, supported by the UK and Norway, will be used to introduce innovative financing for health facilities in Leribe and Quthing districts in the first year, with expansion to other districts in subsequent years.

Severe armyworm infestations likely to impact 2012/13 production

KEY MESSAGES

• As the peak of the lean season continues, many poor households will continue to face Stressed (IPC Phase 2!) acute food insecurity outcomes in March, in the presence of humanitarian assistance.

HASEPHAPO-TAUNYANE, 27 March 2013 (IRIN) - Tsotleho Befole, 24, travelled from the highlands of Lesotho to neighbouring South Africa twice in the past year, searching for work in the mines. Both times it proved fruitless.

"They said I needed a South African ID to get work. I only have a Basotho passport. [But] there is no work in Lesotho. Nothing," he told IRIN.

"The only work is down there," he clarified, pointing to a fish farm at the Katse Dam.

By John Sparrow in Lesotho

Ask Red Cross volunteer Malikhang Matsoakeletse what troubles Lesotho’s foothill villages and she will take you to her clients: the hungry and lonely elderly, the struggling mothers, the orphaned children, those with HIV, and the impoverished grandparents caring for their children’s children.

On the morning we met her, Malikhang’s rounds took us to the home of Mafilipi Nthaha, 56, who cares for her nine-year-old grandson, a bright boy who wants to be a footballer. Who knows, perhaps he will, but tonight he will probably go to bed hungry.

In a small mountain village in Lesotho in southern Africa, Rosa Maria Rametsi and her husband are raising their six grandchildren. Their two youngest grandchildren attend a CRS-supported Early Childhood Development Center where they learn to count, to recite the alphabet and to work together in groups. Rosa Maria is hopeful this education will give the children a good start towards a bright future.

The Kingdom of Lesotho received United Nations Central Emergency Response Funds (CERF) following food insecurity after severe drought in July 2012. In anticipation of severe malnutrition and other childhood illnesses, the WHO Lesotho and other UN Agencies supported the government on nationwide training of health workers in health facilities.

This summary note is an excerpt from the chapter on Lesotho that will appear in the peer-reviewed IFPRI monograph, Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis.

The research, produced in collaboration with scientists from the countries studied, is based on scenarios from economic global climate change models, and takes into account estimates of each country’s economic and population growth. Each study includes a set of policy recommendations.