Latest KFF Health News Stories
Oral Arguments Showcased Justices’ Personailities
The New York Times reports that last week’s action at the Supreme Court gave the public an in-depth view of the insitution and the justices. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that, in a recent speech, Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t give any hints about what the high court will do on the health law question.
State Roundup: Docs Fight Over HMO In Fla.; Calif. Mulls Public Employee ‘Bill Of Rights’
A selection of state health care stories from Florida, Minnesota, California and Georgia.
Ryan Budget Plan Draws Tough Talk From Obama While Insurers Keep Their Distance
President Barack Obama offers sharp critcism of the GOP budget plan, which passed the House on a near-party-line vote last week and which has been embraced by GOP presidential hopefuls. Although the plan, written by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would greatly expand the role of private insurers in Medicare, the insurance industry has been mostly silent as well.
IPS Examines Efforts To End FGM In Liberia
Inter Press Service examines efforts to end female genital mutilation (FGM) in Liberia. “[T]hrough cooperative efforts with traditional leaders, the government of Liberia is quietly moving to … bring an end to female genital cutting in Liberia,” IPS writes, adding, “International organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund argue that FGM is a human rights violation that denies women ‘their physical and mental integrity, their right to freedom from violence and discrimination, and in the most extreme case, their life.'” According to the news service, “FGM remains a highly sensitive issue for the government, and officials interviewed maintained that it would take years to put an end to the practice” (Lupick, 4/2).
IOM Releases Summary Of Workshop On Country-Level Decision Making For Controlling Chronic Diseases
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (IOM) on Monday released a summary of a workshop, titled “Country-Level Decision Making for Control of Chronic Diseases.” As part of a series of follow-up activities to the IOM’s 2010 report, “Promoting Cardiovascular Health in the Developing World,” the workshop “aimed to identify what is needed to create tools for country-led planning of effective, efficient, and equitable provision of programs to prevent and reduce the burden of chronic diseases,” according to its website (4/2).
New Initiative Aims To Strengthen Regulatory Capacity, Systems For Delivery Of Medicines In Africa
“The need to ensure that people in Africa have access to essential, high quality, safe and affordable medicines has just received a major boost with the launch of the East African Community (EAC) Medicines Registration Harmonization Project in Arusha, Tanzania, on 30 March 2011,” UNAIDS reports in a feature story on its website. An alliance “bringing together the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID), and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI),” “hope[s] to strengthen regulatory capacity and systems for medicines in Africa, including antiretroviral drugs, so that fewer lives are lost due to drugs which are unsafe and of poor quality or which are largely unavailable or delivered inefficiently,” according to the article (4/2).
Haitian Cholera Epidemic No Place For ‘Good-Guy/Bad-Guy Distinctions’
In this Reuters opinion piece, finance blogger Felix Salmon responds to a New York Times (NYT) article published on Monday in which journalist Deborah Sontag examines the global response to Haiti’s cholera epidemic. He writes, “There’s no doubt that Haiti’s cholera epidemic was massive and tragic, and that the response to it could have been better, in an ideal world. But Sontag barely attempts to address the question of why the response was suboptimal. … Rather, [she] spends a huge amount of effort tracking down, on the one hand, purely anecdotal stories of individual Haitians who were exposed to the disease, and on the other hand, the detailed story of whether and how the outbreak could be traced back to a group of Nepalese peacekeepers on the island.”
UNICEF on Tuesday launched a social media campaign “to raise awareness about children in the Sahel region in northern Africa who are in urgent need of food aid,” CNN reports. UNICEF estimates that one million children in the region are at risk of starvation, and the U.N. says more than 10 million people risk severe acute malnutrition, the news agency notes. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, “the main causes of the humanitarian crisis in the region are ‘drought, chronic poverty, high food prices, displacement and conflict,'” CNN writes. The campaign also aims to raise funds for the crisis, as UNICEF reports having only $30 million of a $120 million appeal in its coffers, according to the news agency (4/3).
International Community Urging Sudanese Government To Open Humanitarian Access To Southern Areas
Officials from the U.S., African Union and the international community “are working with Sudan’s government to open humanitarian access to” the country’s Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, where refugees “fleeing fighting between local militia and government troops” have gathered and are in need of food aid, VOA News reports. The officials are asking “Khartoum to approve a plan for humanitarian corridors as more than 140,000 new refugees have left for South Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia,” the news service writes, adding that Princeton Lyman, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, “said there are ways to get food aid into Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile without Khartoum’s consent, but they are inadequate to the need” (Stearns, 4/2). On Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved by voice vote a resolution (.pdf) urging an end to cross-border conflict and “calling for ‘the government of Sudan to allow immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to South Kordofan, Blue Nile and all other conflict-affected areas of Sudan,'” Agence France-Presse reports (3/31).
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity’s (NSABB) “reversal on publishing two controversial H5N1 studies is poised to shift discussions on the topic that continue in London this week, as more participants in the debate weigh in following the March 30 announcement,” CIDRAP News reports (Schnirring, 4/2). But Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University, who is the acting chair of the panel, stressed on Monday that the “recommendation that two controversial papers on bird flu be published in full is not a reversal of the stand it took last year out of concerns over terrorism,” Reuters writes. “‘We had new information, confidential information, about benefits of this research, and we also had confidential information about the risks involved,'” Keim said, according to the news service (Kelland/Begley, 4/2).
Advocates For Youth Report Examines Youth Policies Within PEPFAR
A new report from Advocates for Youth “analyzes youth policies within the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), including its legislative authority, most recent five-year strategy, relevant guidance documents, and all 21 currently available PEPFAR country Partnership Frameworks” and includes “a set of recommendations for the U.S. Congress, [Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC)], and Partner Country governments, to design and implement the bold policy needed to support youth sexual and reproductive health and rights, including promotion of comprehensive sexuality education and youth-friendly, integrated, HIV and family planning services,” Advocates for Youth Executive Vice President Debra Hauser writes in an RH Reality Check blog post. She concludes, “In the end, it is young people who hold the key to ending this epidemic. That’s why they should be at the center, not the periphery, of our programs and policies” (4/3).
India Must Focus On Food Supply Chain To Improve Malnutrition Rates
The cause of malnutrition in India — which “results in a loss of productivity, indirect losses from impaired cognitive development, and losses from increased long-term health care costs” — is “not so much a lack of nutrient-rich food, but rather a weakness in the food supply chain,” William Thomson, a research assistant at the U.S. Naval War College, writes in an opinion piece in The Diplomat. “Rather than correct supply chain issues, which would increase availability of food while reducing costs, the government” has passed a National Food Security Bill that would subsidize grain purchases “at a time when it can ill afford the expense associated with underwriting grain purchases for almost two thirds of the country’s population,” he continues.
Improved Access To Family Planning In Africa Will Lead To Economic Development
Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation writes in an opinion piece in Nigeria’s Vanguard, “My top priority as a co-chair of the foundation I run with my husband is making sure that all families have access to safe and effective contraception tools that empower them to make a decision about what’s best for them and their family. And that means encouraging aid donors and governments here in Nigeria and across Africa to make family planning a priority.” Improved access to modern methods of contraception and child spacing would save millions of lives, “[b]ut family planning doesn’t just save lives; it also makes life better for families and communities, becoming a key driver of economic development,” Gates continues.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports that President Barack Obama’s expressed confidence that the health law will stand.
Supreme Court’s Health Law Ruling: If The Mandate Falls, What’s Next?
News outlets offer analysis about how the high court’s decision could play out — both in terms of policy and politics.
Democrats Offer Optimistic Take On Court’s Health Law Decision
Appearing on the Sunday talk shows, Vice President Joseph Biden and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., defended the health law and predicted it would be upheld by the high court.
Commentators offer a wide variety of views as they look back on last week’s case at the high court.
April Issue Of WHO Bulletin Available Online
The April issue of the WHO Bulletin features an editorial on the WHO research agenda for influenza; a public health round-up; an article on influenza in Ghana; a research paper on population-based burden of influenza-associated hospitalization in rural western Kenya; and a policy paper on the integration of pneumonia prevention and treatment interventions with immunization services in resource-poor countries (April 2012).
USAID Working To Help Millions Needing Food Aid In Africa’s Sahel Region
“This week, urgently needed food — 33,700 tons of sorghum from American farmers — will depart the United States for West Africa, as a part of the U.S. Government’s response to the drought in the Sahel,” Dina Esposito, director of the Office of Food for Peace, writes in this post in USAID’s “Impact” blog. She says that in addition to food aid, “USAID is also focusing on improving nutrition, increasing agricultural production, linking individuals to local markets through voucher programs, rehabilitating public infrastructure through cash-for-work schemes, and mitigating conflict, among other activities,” with the aim of “alleviat[ing] poverty and build[ing] community resilience to withstand future shocks” (3/30).
Medicaid Long-Term Care Restrictions Tighten
The Wall Street Journal offers tips on how to preserve some assets while attempting to qualify for Medicaid assistance.
