Archives: Morning Breakouts

In this Lancet opinion piece, Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of global health and HIV policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Josh Michaud, principal policy analyst at the Foundation, examine the U.S. Global Health Initiative (GHI), which "represents the bulk of the U.S. global health budget and bilateral activities in more than 80 countries." Kates and Michaud provide a brief overview of the initiative, identify the principles upon which it was founded and say that four years into the GHI, "The picture is one of both successes and challenges."

As the World Health Assembly draws to a close in Geneva this week, and Margaret Chan accepts her appointment to a second five-year term as director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), an editorial and an opinion piece examine the future of the U.N. health agency. Summaries of these pieces appear below.

Inter Press Service reports on the Fifth International Parliamentarians' Conference on the Implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) program of action, taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. "According to a preliminary draft Istanbul Declaration issued by conference participants, the world's parliamentarians are determined to play their role in mobilizing the necessary resources for the ICPD agenda, as well as strengthening parliamentary oversight in ensuring its implementation," IPS writes, adding, "In the draft declaration, to be finalized and adopted Friday, parliamentarians committed to looking ahead to ensure that future priorities are included in the goals and targets being developed through the post-2015 development agenda processes." The news service also notes that "one of the outcomes of this meeting will be a call for governments to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to ICPD programs" (Atarah, 5/25).

"[P]eople everywhere have a stake in eradicating polio, as we have stamped out smallpox," a Bloomberg View editorial states, adding, "Immunizing the last unvaccinated children on the planet is an expensive and complex undertaking, and worth it in the long run." The editorial notes, "If polio transmission could be stopped by 2015, the net benefit from reduced treatment costs and productivity gains through 2035 would be $40 billion to $50 billion, according to a 2010 study."

"I have just returned from a whirlwind visit to Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where I participated in a number of events around the G8 and NATO Summits focused on food and nutrition security," Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern Worldwide, writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, adding, "Among so many world leaders and high-level representatives from civil society and academia, I felt a sense of critical mass beginning to form in the fight to end global hunger." He continues, "It's a feeling I've had before -- perhaps not this strong -- only to be disappointed when promises went unfulfilled. We must keep calling our leaders to persevere, especially those in the G8, to ensure that does not happen this time."

"The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease," Reuters reports. According to Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a special assistant to Pakistan's Prime Minister who is in charge of the polio eradication campaign, more than 20 leading Islamic scholars "have signed an endorsement of the polio eradication program, which is being used to persuade Pakistani parents" to allow their children to be vaccinated, the news agency writes. In Nigeria, the Federation of Muslim Women's Associations is backing a polio immunization campaign there, Reuters notes. "It is not the first time that the world has come tantalizingly close to wiping out the crippling disease," the news agency writes. "'We're so close, there is no time for complacency,' Dr. Christopher Elias, head of global development at the [Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation], a major donor, told Reuters in Geneva," Reuters adds (Nebehay, 5/24).

Showing unusual bipartisan spirit, the Senate passed a massive FDA user-fee reauthorization bill Thursday designed to prevent drug shortages and speed federal approval of medicines, including lower-cost generic versions.

The study says states collected $244 billion from tobacco settlement payments between 1998 and 2010, and used about $8 billion of that for anti-smoking campaigns.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos on Thursday "called for strong leadership and a comprehensive response plan, as well as donor support, for the food crisis in West Africa's drought-prone Sahel region, warning that hunger could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe," the U.N. News Centre reports (5/24). Amos "met with President Macky Sall in Senegal and Blaise Compaore in Burkina Faso on a four-day trip to west Africa to examine the impact of the food crisis," Agence France-Presse writes. "We can do more to avoid the crisis from becoming a catastrophe in the region but to save more lives we need strong leadership ... and continued generosity from the regional and humanitarian community," she said, the news agency notes (5/24). The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which Amos heads, said that in addition to food aid, "priorities for those in need of assistance include health care and water and sanitation services," according to the U.N. News Centre (5/24).