Morning Breakouts

USAID Releases External Evaluation Of President’s Malaria Initiative

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

USAID on Tuesday released the final report (.pdf) by an external evaluation team of the first five years (FY 2006-FY 2010) of the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), which is a major component of the Global Health Initiative (GHI), according to a USAID press release. “PMI leadership agrees with the overall findings and believes that the 10 main recommendations are both relevant and useful for program improvement,” the press release states, noting “[t]he evaluators gave the PMI high marks in effective leadership, good management and participatory processes” (2/21).

USAID Funding Cookstove Initiative In Haiti

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

In an effort “to establish a sustainable local market and industry for clean cooking solutions in Haiti,” “USAID recently announced an award to Chemonics International to implement the three-year Improved Cooking Technology Project” to “establish a thriving local market — on both the supply and demand sides — as well as a sustainable industry for clean cooking solutions, including Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and more efficient biomass cookstoves,” according to a USAID press release. “USAID’s $7.2 million project in Haiti will support and develop viable for-profit businesses in the production and distribution of improved charcoal cookstoves and LPG stoves” and “reflects [the agency’s] support of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation,” the press release states (2/21).

Experts Discuss Universal Health Coverage At CFR Roundtable

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

This post in the UHC Forward blog describes the second meeting of the Universal Health Coverage Roundtable Series, “Toward Sustainable Universal Health Coverage,” which was hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on February 9. The panelists “examined the possibilities, challenges, and paths toward achieving Universal Health Coverage in different resource settings by exploring the methods for expanding and supporting coverage worldwide” and discussed issues such as how to define UHC, the importance of quality in health care, improving cost-effectiveness, and how to increase utilization of existing services, according to the blog (Wellington, 2/20).

Burma Unable To Expand HIV, TB Treatment Programs Without More Donor Support, MSF Report Says

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

Approximately 85,000 HIV-positive people in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are in need of antiretroviral treatment (ART) and cannot access it “due to a lack of funding, despite renewed international engagement with the government amid a wave of political reform, according to a report released Wednesday” by the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Associated Press/CBS News reports (2/22). “At the launch of a new report called ‘Lives in the Balance,’ MSF said that only a quarter of the estimated 120,000 people living with HIV and AIDS were receiving treatment, and that it was turning people away from its clinics,” BBC News writes. While plans were made last year among MSF and its partners to scale up treatment for HIV and tuberculosis (TB), “those proposals were shelved after the Global Fund” to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its Round 11 grants, according to the news agency. “The money was expected to provide HIV drugs for 46,500 people in Myanmar, along with treatment for another 10,000 people sicken[ed] by drug-resistant tuberculosis in the country, [the report] said,” BBC writes (Fisher, 2/22).

Cholera Epidemic Spreads In DRC; Efforts To Combat Disease Remain Underfunded, U.N. Reports

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

“A cholera epidemic has spread to nine out of 11 provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations said on Tuesday,” SAPA/News24 reports (Gold, 2/21). “Health authorities in the Republic of Congo have recorded 340 cases of cholera, nine of them fatal, since June 2011, in the northern district of Likouala, and have warned that the disease continues to spread and that some health centers lack sufficient treatment,” IRIN reports (2/21).

South Korea Stepping Up Fight Against TB, CBS News Reports

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

CBS News examines the fight against tuberculosis (TB) in South Korea, which “has the highest incidence rate of tuberculosis among the world’s wealthiest countries, nations [that] belong to the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).” The news service continues, “In 2010, South Korea’s incidence rate of tuberculosis was 97 out of 100,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), while the mortality rate of TB was 5.4 out of 100,000. (In the U.S., the incidence rate was 4.1 and the mortality rate was 0.18 during the same time period.)”

Scientific American Examines Gates Foundation Toilet-Design Initiative

February 22, 2012 Morning Briefing

“Advocates for universal access to and use of basic personal sanitation hope their efforts will get a big boost in August, when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation present several hygienic innovations developed through its Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” Scientific American reports in a feature article. “The foundation’s involvement could do for sanitation what it has accomplished in the battle to eradicate malaria — raise the visibility of a fundamental health care crisis and encourage new efforts to end it,” the magazine writes.