Archives: Morning Breakouts

"[I]n an exclusive interview with Newsweek," Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discussed how "she has decided to make family planning her signature issue and primary public health a priority." Gates said, "My goal is to get this back on the global agenda," the news service writes. "Gates believes that by focusing on the lives of women and children, and by making it clear that the agenda is neither coercive population control nor abortion, the controversy over international family planning programs can be defused," according to Newsweek.

VOA News features a five-part series on South Africa's rural public health sector, which the news service writes is "plagued by a high burden of infectious diseases, severe doctor and nurse shortages, lack of medicines and essential medical equipment and incompetent management," resulting in high patient death rates. "Eighty percent of South Africa's population of about 50 million people depends on public health care," the news service notes. In the first part of the series, VOA writes that "international health care monitoring groups ... consistently rate South Africa's public health sector among the worst in the world," "despite the fact that the government gives more than 100 billion rand ($13.3 billion) every year to state health -- one of the biggest expenditures on such services in the developing world."

A recent study, conducted by Elizabeth Whitcombe, visiting senior research scholar at the earth system science interdisciplinary center at the University of Maryland, and published in the May 13 issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, "mapped meteorological, irrigation and medical reports during British rule in India" and concluded modern-day India should learn lessons from the past to improve engineering plans and epidemiological "modeling of environmental factors controlling vector borne disease," especially malaria, SciDev.Net reports. "Ashvin Kumar Gosain, professor at the department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, however, disagreed that scientists were ignoring the link between irrigation and disease," according to the news service. "Studies are being done even now and the linkage between river flows and disease is being studied once again in the context of climate change," he said, SciDev.Net reports (Sreelata, 5/4).

The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases' "End the Neglect" blog examines the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Burundi, writing, "In 2007, the Legatum Foundation, an international private investment organization that promotes sustainable development throughout the world agreed to fund the treatment of NTDs in Burundi and brought together several partners to assist Burundi's Ministry of Health." The blog notes, "It has been over five years since the Burundi NTD Control Plan was implemented, and its success is visible throughout the country" and provides a link to the network's "A Better Future for Burundi" video, "which highlights all the accomplishments in controlling NTDs in Burundi" (5/4).

In a letter (.pdf) dated April 25, Amy Patterson, associate director for science policy in the office of the director of the National Institutes of Health, "has refuted criticism of the way a meeting held to allow a biosecurity advisory group to review controversial bird flu studies was handled," denying "the agenda was crafted to achieve a predetermined outcome," the Canadian Press/Winnipeg Free Press writes. Patterson was "responding to a harsh critique of the meeting from Michael Osterholm, a member of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity [NSABB]," who, in a letter (.doc) to Patterson dated April 12, criticized "the agenda and speakers list" of the March 29-30 meeting, the news service writes (Branswell, 5/4).

"Sahelian governments and local and international aid groups are struggling to cope with both the continual arrivals of people fleeing ... northern Mali, and the mounting number of hungry people across the region as the lean season gets underway," IRIN reports. According to UNHCR, nearly 300,000 people have been displaced within Mali or fled to surrounding countries, and IRIN reports "governments are already struggling to get aid to millions of their inhabitants, who are facing hunger due to drought." The news service writes, "The U.N. estimates that 16 million people across the Sahel are facing hunger this year, and hunger levels are rising." IRIN continues, "This complex mix of slow and fast-onset crises means the U.N. will be revising or launching new funding appeals from the current $1 billion to $1.5 billion in coming weeks, said Noel Tsekouras, deputy head of office at the West Africa bureau of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Dakar" (5/4).

The Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog notes that PEPFAR recently released its 8th annual report (.pdf) to Congress. "The five-page document outlines the program's progress as of the end of fiscal year 2011 in various areas," including the provision of antiretroviral treatment, care, and support; HIV testing and counseling for pregnant women; and prevention of mother-to-child transmission services, the blog notes. The report includes sections on "leading with science," "smart investments," "country ownership," and "shared responsibility," according to the blog (Mazzotta, 5/4).

Several humanitarian groups say that despite the G8's pledge made at the 2009 L'Aquila Summit to provide $22 billion over three years to improve agriculture and food security, "the commitment is about to expire" and "much more needs to be done to end hunger," VOA News reports. Neil Watkins, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid, said he expects G8 leaders at their upcoming summit at Camp David later this month will promote a new food security initiative with greater private sector involvement, according to VOA. "Gawain Kripke of Oxfam America praised President Obama's food security efforts since 2009," the news service writes, adding that Kripke said, "[W]e've been calling for President Obama to keep that momentum up -- to keep pushing for bigger and better and more ambitious goals and more ambitious resource commitments."

Scientific American examines how strains of cephalosporin-resistant gonnorhea have "been emerging in Japan, and moving east and west from there, for at least a decade." The magazine writes, "Rapid international travel allowed the resistance mutation to hopscotch the globe," noting antibiotic-resistant strains that have been identified in Sweden, England, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, and France. "'We can't go back to older antibiotics,' says Peter Leone, who is board chair of the National Coalition of STD Directors and medical director of North Carolina's STD prevention program. 'Once resistance emerges in gonorrhea, it is there for good. Cephalosporins are all we have left,'" he added, according to Scientific American. The magazine writes that efforts "to educate physicians and patients, to track resistant strains and to develop new treatments ... must be carefully targeted and well coordinated with one another," and concludes, "If not, truly untreatable gonorrhea, and its expensive, destructive consequences, could be the worldwide result" (McKenna, 5/4).

In Massachusetts, House lawmakers released their proposal to curb health care spending by setting a goal.