Morning Briefing

At an event on Monday launching USAID's "Every Child Deserves a Fifth Birthday" social media campaign, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah described how $30 worth of materials contained in a backpack he carried onto stage, including zinc to prevent diarrhea and vaccines to prevent pneumococcal diseases, "can lead to a massive reduction in preventable child death in the developing world," GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog reports. Though the backpack and the campaign's use of 5th birthday photographs from celebrities, lawmakers, and policymakers "made for powerful symbols," the event "dug a little deeper" to "highligh[t] numerous challenges facing the major U.S. government advocacy effort on child survival, which includes a gathering of world health leaders in Washington in June to push a new plan aimed at reducing preventable child deaths to zero," the blog says.