Archives: Morning Breakouts

Nature Outlook examines the fight against malaria in Uganda. "Uganda's tragic failure to abate malaria has numerous political, geographic, economic and social factors -- and illustrates the reality that it takes more than scientific breakthroughs and cheap drugs to solve this persistent menace," according to the article. Nature describes how a primarily rural population, "[f]unding bottlenecks, inefficient procurement processes, transportation problems," drug stock-outs, and a lack of health care workers affects access to care and treatment for malaria, as well as how aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the President's Malaria Initiative, and other donors is supporting programs to build sustainable solutions to fighting the disease (Newmen, 4/25).

The measure, more than a year old, was initially put forth by Gov. Deval Patrick, but a panel's chair predicted "a significant redraft" before it reaches the Senate floor.

Modern Healthcare reports that a U.S. district court judge denied an effort by some trade groups to stop the Express Scripts acquisition of Medco until a review of their pending lawsuit is reviewed.

The Associated Press reports that people with HIV/AIDS have a lot at stake regarding the health law's future -- specifically, its Medicaid expansion and ban on pre-existing condition exclusions. In a second story, though, AP reports on why the small business group, the NFIB, hopes to see the law overturned. Meanwhile, MarketWatch reports that some wealthy Americans would save big money if the high court rejects the overhaul.

Also in the news, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich announced Wednesday that he would suspend his campaign.

Every week, Kaiser Health News reporter Jessica Marcy selects interesting reading from around the Web.

KHN's Sarah Barr reports on the annual Medscape survey, which offers insights into what physicians earn, how they view that number, and what they think about coming changes to the health care system.

"The World Health Organization heralded major gains Tuesday in the fight against malaria, one of the developing world's biggest killers, but warned universal access to treatment remains elusive," Agence France-Presse reports, noting, "The assessment came on the eve of World Malaria Day," observed Wednesday and "designed to shine the light on the mosquito-borne parasite that killed 655,000 people in 2010, including 560,000 children under five" (4/24). "A massive acceleration in the global distribution of mosquito nets, the expansion of programs to spray the insides of buildings with insecticides, and an increase in access to prompt antimalarial treatment has brought down malaria mortality rates by more than a quarter worldwide, and by one-third in Africa since 2000," but "simply maintaining current rates of progress will not be enough to meet global targets for malaria control," the agency writes in a news release (4/24).

In this post in the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Blog," Connie Veillette, director of CGD's rethinking U.S. foreign assistance initiative, comments on a draft farm bill released by Congress last week, which she writes "includes some promising fixes to the notoriously inefficient U.S. food aid system." She continues, "Kudos are definitely in order for a draft bill that advances ideas around improving food aid effectiveness," including "the reauthorization of local and regional purchase (LRP) to buy food closer to emergencies." Veillette writes, "I would prefer the nature of the food emergency to determine whether U.S. commodities or LRP is used rather than some formula that makes more sense for Washington politics than for global hunger," and concludes, "I commend the [Senate Agriculture] Committee for taking a serious look at improving food aid efficiencies and hope that this marks the start of a productive process of policy reform" (4/24).

A coalition of "[a]id agencies said on Monday they are facing a multi-million dollar funding shortage to deal with a food crisis in the Sahel," News24 reports. "Action Against Hunger, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision said they have raised only $52 million of $250 million needed to provide emergency assistance to six million people in the region," the news service writes, adding that the groups "have called for a donor pledging conference to rally wealthy governments and donors" (4/23). They also "are calling on G8 leaders to consider the Sahel crisis at their summit next month," according to VOA News.

"The April 2012 issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases features the launch of a new collection, 'A research agenda for the control and elimination of human helminthiases,'" the PLoS "Speaking of Medicine" blog reports. According to the blog, "The collection includes a series of eight reviews from the Disease Reference Group on Helminth Infections (DRG4) that, taken together, outline a research and development (R&D) agenda for the control and elimination of helminth diseases of humans" (4/24).

"[D]espite high prevalence rates of HIV among [men who have sex with men (MSM)], funding for HIV prevention, treatment and care consistently neglects these populations, often due to stigma and discrimination," Owen Ryan, deputy director of public policy at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, writes in this guest post in the Funders Concerned About AIDS blog. "In our report, 'Achieving an AIDS-Free Generation for Gay Men and Other MSM,' we found that MSM are neglected and marginalized by national HIV responses throughout the world, even in countries where MSM are a significant proportion of all HIV infections," he notes, concluding, "As a funding community, we still have more to do. Our investments can be transformative. Whether establishing best practices, funding civil society advocacy, or investing in program delivery, this funding helps establish a bridge from policy to practice and often creates the kind of pressure that makes neglecting MSM very difficult" (4/24).