Archives: Morning Breakouts

Enrollment in health savings accounts grew 18 percent last year, as employers continued to steer workers into high-deductible medical plans.

In this Atlantic opinion piece, Rachel Hills, a freelance writer based in London, examines the WHO's decision on May 25 to declare polio a public health emergency, "calling for the 194 member states to fully fund the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and fill the currently $945 million gap in its budget for 2012-13." She writes, "Few people probably associate the phrase 'global health emergency' with polio, a disease that has been around for 5,000 years and is on a decades-long decline so steep that there are less than a thousand recorded cases left on Earth," but "polio's threat is still very real, and the mission to finally stamp it out forever is a crucial one for reasons even bigger than the disease itself."

"With a growing population and an onslaught of new planetary pressures expected to limit terrestrial food production, the conversation about how we're going to feed a hungry planet should include the oceans," Andrew Sharpless, CEO of Oceana, and actor Ted Danson write in the Huffington Post's "Green" blog. "We need to produce 70 percent more food to meet the coming hunger needs, with meat production alone increasing from 270 million metric tons in 2009 to 470 million metric tons in 2050, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization," they continue, adding, "The oceans will provide us an opportunity to meet that demand in a way that's eternally renewable, but only if we start taking the appropriate steps right now."

Citing a U.N. report released in May, titled "Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010," which shows "the number of women worldwide dying of pregnancy and childbirth-related complications has almost halved in the last 20 years," Agnes Odhiambo, a researcher for women in Africa at Human Rights Watch, writes in this Inter Press Service opinion piece, "Although there was a 41 percent reduction in sub-Saharan Africa, the progress is slow and uneven.

Trade officials met last week at the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization "to make progress on a proposal that would allow poor countries to provide inexpensive generic versions of lifesaving medications, rather than rely a single version of the same drugs under expensive patent monopolies," but the U.S. "remained steadfast in rejecting proposals aimed at lowering the prices of existing medicines in poor countries," the Huffington Post reports (Carter, 5/29). At the 18th session of the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), delegates considered two proposals, according to Intellectual Property Watch. The news service notes that a South African proposal (.pdf), submitted on behalf of the African Group and the Development Agenda Group (DAG), would have assisted developing nations adapt their patent schemes "to make full use of the flexibilities available in the international patent system in the interest of public health," and a U.S. proposal (.pdf) "warned against any weakening of patent protection as a solution to the lack of availability of medicine in developing countries" because, "the delegate said, less patent rights would be detrimental to innovation" (Saez, 5/25).

"The Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday theme for this week is prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT)," an e-mail alert from USAID reports, noting, "PMTCT provides HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support services for the whole family and is the most effective way to create an HIV-free generation." According to USAID, "when a mother receives antiretroviral therapy, the risk of mother-to-child transmission drops from about 40 percent to near zero." The e-mail states, "USAID and the global community are committed to accelerating progress and scale-up of PMTCT, with the goal of eliminating new pediatric HIV infections by 2015 and improving maternal, newborn, and child survival and health in the context of HIV" (5/29).

In a guest post on the Global Health Technologies Coalition's "Breakthroughs" blog, Jamie Elizabeth Rosen, media and communications manager at Aeras, interviews Steven Reed, founder, president, and chief scientific officer of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), "a 120-person non-profit biotech committed to applying innovative science to the research and development of products to prevent, detect, and treat infectious diseases of poverty." Aeras, "a non-profit biotech focused on developing vaccines against TB," has partnered with IDRI to develop a novel tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate, Rosen notes and summarizes Reed's responses to questions regarding TB vaccine development (Taylor, 5/29).

Inter Press Service examines the relationship between climate change and family planning in least-developed countries (LDCs), writing the "double challenge of mitigating climate change and combating crushing poverty makes improving reproductive rights and promoting gender equality imperatives that can no longer be delayed, according to several recent reports and agreements." IPS highlights several reports and agreements, including an agreement between U.N. Women and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) that "aims at tackling gender inequality in the 75 OIF member states, most of which are also LDCs"; an agreement between U.N. Women and the European Union "to strengthen cooperation between the two organizations in their work on gender equality"; and the Royal Society of London's People and the Planet report, "which focuses on reproductive rights and social justice as cornerstones of global economic sustainability" (Godoy, 5/30).

"The CIA's vaccination gambit put at risk something very precious -- the integrity of public health programs in Pakistan and around the globe" and has "also added to the dangers facing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a world that's increasingly hostile to U.S. aid organizations," opinion writer David Ignatius writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. Noting that attention in the U.S. has focused on a 33-year prison sentence given to Shakil Afridi, a doctor convicted of treason for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden through a vaccination program, Ignatius says, "Afridi and his handlers should reckon with the moral consequences of what they did. Here's the painful truth: Some people may die because they don't get vaccinations, suspecting that immunization is part of a CIA plot."

"U.N. officials say they expect 18 million people in West Africa will go hungry this year, including three million young children whose lives or health will be at risk," the Associated Press reports. David Gressly, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for nine countries in Africa's Sahel region, told reporters on Tuesday that at least one million children's lives will be threatened by malnutrition in 2012, and malnutrition will cause health problems for another two million children under age five, according to the news agency. Gressly said drought, failed harvests, and political instability were making this the worst hunger crisis to hit the region since 2005, the AP notes (5/29).

"Sustainable development cannot be realized unless hunger and malnutrition are eradicated, the [Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)] said in a policy document prepared for the Rio+20 Summit to be held in June in Rio de Janeiro," an FAO press release reports. "At the Rio Summit, we have the golden opportunity to explore the convergence between the agendas of food security and sustainability to ensure that happens," FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said, according to the press release. The report says, "Improving agricultural and food systems is essential for a world with both healthier people and healthier ecosystems," the release notes (5/30). According to Reuters, "The governments attending the Rio+20 summit in June should commit themselves to speed up efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition and use the U.N.'s voluntary guidelines on the right to food, the FAO said" (5/30).

The United Nations humanitarian office on Tuesday released its 2011 Annual Report of the Central Emergency Response Fund, which highlights the contributions of the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to humanitarian partners in 45 countries in 2011, the U.N. News Center reports. "Financed by voluntary contributions from Member States, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local governments, the private sector and individual donors, the CERF is a humanitarian fund established by the United Nations to enable more timely and reliable humanitarian assistance to those affected by natural disasters and armed conflicts, helping agencies to pre-position funding for humanitarian action," the news service notes (5/29).

A judge denied requests that would have made Attorney General Rob McKenna tell the Supreme Court what he's said publicly, that parts of the federal health care law should stand minus the individual mandate.

NPR reports that counterfeiters are trying to take advantage of this market, but are demonstrating clumsiness.

Included on the list is a bill to repeal the health law's medical device tax and another to repeal the OTC ban. The device-tax issue has already emerged as a hot topic in many congressional races.