Archives: Morning Breakouts

The New Hampshire Senate is expected to weigh a half dozen abortion bills later this week, including one that would cut off taxpayer funding to providers that perform elective abortions, according to media reports. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, some women's groups and doctors oppose a law that prompted Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to suspend nonsurgical abortions.

In this post in USAID's "IMPACTblog," blog administrator Mark Phelan recounts his recent visit to Niger and Mauritania, in Africa's Sahel region, where he was "assessing nutrition-focused humanitarian assistance." He writes, "We are indeed facing a crisis, but I am encouraged by what is being done differently, by ways we have applied lessons learned in the Sahel during food crises in 2010 and 2005, though we still have a long way to go." He concludes, "I am encouraged that we have learned some important lessons from past crises. The U.S., in partnership with other donors, has taken early action in response to early warnings, and together, we are saving lives" (4/20).

"Higher global food prices are hampering attempts to hit targets for food and nutrition," and "rates of child and maternal mortality [a]re still 'unacceptably high' -- partly as a result of surging commodity prices," according to the Global Monitoring Report 2012, released by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday in Washington, D.C., the Guardian reports (Elliot, 4/20). The report says rising food prices have affected some countries' ability to reach certain Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a World Bank/IMF press release notes.

"We can worry less that a newly created bird flu virus might kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped from the laboratory," a New York Times editorial states. "But there is still some residual danger. And we remain appalled at the slipshod way in which this research was authorized despite its potential dangers to public health and national security," the editorial continues. The editorial provides a recap of the controversy leading up to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity's recommendation to publish the studies in late March, and writes, "The board's new verdict is not wholly reassuring."

"A 'final push' is needed toward eradication of polio worldwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said" in an online update on the agency's polio eradication efforts, United Press International reports. "Polio incidence dropped more than 99 percent since the launch of global polio eradication efforts in 1988 and no polio cases have been reported since January 2011 in India, one of the four remaining endemic countries, a CDC report said," UPI writes. "'Nevertheless, poliovirus transmission is ongoing in the other three endemic countries -- Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan -- and travelers have carried the infection back to 39 previously polio-free countries over the last several years,' [the update] said," according to UPI.

The U.S. government on Friday formally accepted a recommendation from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) "to publish two controversial studies of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, moving the pair of papers another step closer to publication," ScienceInsider reports (Malakoff, 4/20). "Groups led by the two scientists -- Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam -- engineered the H5N1 virus to be more transmissible between ferrets, mammals whose response to the flu is most like humans," Bloomberg Businessweek notes. "The research is critical to understanding and detecting bird flu strains, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said [on Friday] in a statement," Bloomberg writes, noting that the NSABB "recommended in March that Sebelius and Collins approve publication" (Wayne, 4/20).

U.K. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell on Friday "announced a doubling of the U.K.'s effort to provide clean water and sanitation to the world's poorest countries," the Guardian reports (Elliot, 4/20). At a High-Level Meeting on Water and Sanitation in Washington, D.C., Mitchell "announced that the U.K., through [the Department for International Development (DfID)], would double the number of people it reached with aid in water, sanitation and hygiene education in the next two years, going from 30 to 60 million people globally by 2015," according to a UNICEF press release (4/20).

"Kenya's High Court ruled on Friday that lawmakers must review legislation that could threaten the import of generic drugs, allowing Kenyans to continue accessing affordable medicine," Reuters reports. In 2009, three people living with HIV filed a lawsuit arguing that the definition of counterfeit drugs in Kenya's Anti-Counterfeit Bill of 2008 was too broad and "unconstitutional because it threatened access to life-saving generic medicine by confusing generic and fake medicine," the news agency notes (4/20).