Archives: Morning Breakouts

Politico reports that the Department of Health and Human Services public affairs offices has hired a former Planned Parenthood spokesman.

At a High-Level Meeting on Innovation for Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission (EMTCT) on Friday in Washington, D.C., "HIV experts, business leaders, aid agencies and ambassadors of 22 priority countries -- home to 90 percent of new HIV infections among children --" agreed that strategic innovations are necessary to curb the spread of the virus from women to their children, PANA/Afrique en Linge reports. "The priority countries are Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe," the news service notes.

"Seeing a child die from pneumonia, diarrhea or a mosquito bite is simply unimaginable to most parents. But that is the sad reality for many families each day," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah writes in a Huffington Post Blog opinion piece, noting, "Last year over seven million children under five died of largely preventable causes." He continues, "Today, the global community has the knowledge and the affordable tools to change the course of history," including bednets, vaccines, and childbirth assistance. "At the current annual rate of decline of 2.6 percent, the gap in child death between rich and poor countries would persist until nearly the end of this century. But we are capable of much more. By working closely with countries and continuing our results-oriented investments in global health, we can bring the rate of child mortality in poor countries to the same level it is in rich countries," he states.

In this post on the Foreign Policy Association's "Foreign Policy Blogs Network," writer Julia Robinson discusses a recent report showing "the rising profile of BRICS countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa -- in health and development assistance and call[ing] upon the group to further their cooperation for better global health in the developing world." Robinson writes, "BRICS represents the enormous potential of emerging economies to change the current geopolitical landscape, especially in the realm of global health," adding, "It is accepted fact that BRICS will influence the global agenda going forward. It remains to be seen whether they will also commit to supporting developing countries in their own struggles for greater economic development and improved public health" (4/21).

The vote at the Utah Republican state convention meant that the long-time senator escaped the fate of former Sen. Robert Bennett.

In this post in USAID's "IMPACTblog," Heather Bergmann of John Snow Inc., who is the technical officer for USAID's AIDSTAR-One project, reports on the need to include youth in transition services for adolescents living with HIV. She writes, "Without proper support, many young people can become overwhelmed, a response that can challenge adherence to AIDS medicines and lead to negative health consequences. This is why it's imperative to create health services that are appropriate and accessible for youth living with HIV." She adds, "Achieving the goal set out by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year of reducing new HIV infections in children and achieving an AIDS-free generation requires addressing the needs of youth with services that are delivered in ways and in places that are accessible, welcoming, and supportive" (4/19).

In a statement published on the website of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Executive Director Radha Muthiah responds to an article published in the Washington Post on Monday, which highlighted the results of a recent MIT/Harvard study on the public health benefits of clean cookstoves. "[T]he Post article correctly identifies the scourge of cooking on open fires and rudimentary cookstoves as a global health problem that demands urgent attention, highlighting World Health Organization data that shows indoor air pollution kills two million people every year," she says. "Regrettably, the article seems to indicate that clean cookstoves do not deliver measurable health impacts and therefore concludes that 'we are not yet ready to distribute clean cookstoves worldwide.' Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, the timing for clean cookstoves is right, and the time is now," she says in the statement (Gearity, 4/19).