In Madina village, outside Accra, Ghana, children tease each other about whose urine has a redder color. Apart from being strikingly thin, they look healthy. Yet they could be affected by Schistosoma haematobium, a parasitic disease common in Africa, where local prevalence rates can exceed 50%. Early diagnosis ensures inexpensive and effective treatment and prevents stunted growth and developmental disabilities in children and bladder cancer or other organ damage in adults (3).

The negative effects of climate change are already evident for many of the 25 million coffee farmers across the tropics and the 90 billion dollar (US) coffee industry. The coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei), the most important pest of coffee worldwide, has already benefited from the temperature rise in East Africa: increased damage to coffee crops and expansion in its distribution range have been reported. In order to anticipate threats and prioritize management actions for H. hampei we present here, maps on future distributions of H. hampei in coffee producing areas of East Africa.

Over the past 15 years, performance-based financing has been implemented in an increasing number of developing countries,
particularly in Africa, as a means of improving health worker performance. Scaling up to national implementation in Burundi and
Rwanda has encouraged proponents of performance-based financing to view it as more than a financing mechanism, but increasingly
as a strategic tool to reform the health sector. We resist such a notion on the grounds that results-based and economically driven

Performance-based financing is generating a heated debate. Some suggest that it may be a donor fad with limited potential to improve service delivery. Most of its critics view it solely as a provider payment mechanism.