Morning Briefing

"Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda, has inherited an unenviable to-do list from former president Bingu wa Mutharika, and AIDS activists are hoping that bolstering the donor-dependent AIDS response will be one of her most urgent priorities," PlusNews reports. "An estimated 10 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive, with about 70,000 Malawians newly infected with HIV every year," the news service writes, adding, "Yet the country is almost entirely dependent on external funding for its AIDS programs, and ambitious plans to scale up treatment have been derailed after the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria rejected a succession of funding proposals."