A study of HIV-positive people in fishing communities on the shores of Lake Victoria in central Uganda has found that more than a quarter have “recombinant” viruses that might threaten both treatment and prevention efforts.

Mohamed Barre Ali lives in Dadachabulla, in the northeastern Kenya area of Wajir South. Ali, an elder and chairman of the local peace committee, told IRIN how years of instability in neighbouring Somalia are affecting his village, about 10km from the border.

Since March 2008, Beatrice Tamaska Kae has lived under a tarpaulin with her seven children in a camp after their eviction from a government forest in Trans Nzoia West district in western Kenya.

In a nondescript room on the 14th floor of a Nairobi office block, the words “hate speech” appear on a computer screen next to the name of a prominent politician, with location, a telephone number and buttons marked “Not verified” and “Follow-up”.

Those who have been following our discussions know about my cousin Jackson. I had a lengthy discussion with him at our clinic in Kibera, after he raised some interesting questions.

Nairobi’s Kibera is a name that anyone familiar with Kenya generally associates with endemic poverty, crime and throngs of people struggling to survive in one of the toughest places.

It is both preventable and treatable, but obstetric fistula plagues the lives of thousands of women in Kenya every year, leaving them incontinent and ostracized. Here are some reasons why:

Last week, you read about my cousin Jackson visiting me at the clinic in Kibera slums. We had a lively discussion about the good old days in Western Kenya, when food diversity was the norm, and cultural life more vibrant.

Mariam* is one of about two dozen female refugees who have been subjected to sexual or domestic violence and who, in many cases shunned by their families, now live in a safe haven inside a camp in Kakuma, in northwest Kenya.

“We’ve only got a hundred years to live,” says singer-songwriter John Ondrasik. He’s being quite generous. The Bible only promises “three score and ten” years of life – a more reasonable expectation.

This week, a cousin of mine visited me at the clinic, to complain that I was encouraging children to refuse ugali. He claimed that the children have learned to ask for more expensive foods, like potato crisps instead.

A Somali woman in Kenya faces an arranged wedding knowing she could infect her husband with HIV/AIDS. She contracted the disease through unsafe anal sex to preserve her virginity.