Following the failure of the UN's Roll Back Malaria programme, the name has changed and more billions have been promised this week in the hope of eradicating the disease by 2015. But Band-Aid measures cannot make any sustainable change until African governments allow their people to improve their own lot, by lifting the economic (and political) repression that keeps them poor.

The biennial AIDS conference ended in Mexico on 8 August with calls for more money and promises to spend it better but UC Berkeley's James Chin explains why much of that money will be wasted until the AIDS industry honestly accepts the facts: by targetting general populations at extremely low risk, AIDS programs are wasting money that should be spent on high-risk groups.