Archives: Morning Breakouts

The GAVI Alliance "has struck a deal for bulk buying rotavirus shots from GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, which cuts the price by two-thirds and will allow poorer countries access to them at around $5 per course," Reuters reports. The vaccines "combat the main cause of diarrhea -- the second-largest killer of children under the age of five worldwide," according to the news agency. GAVI "said on Tuesday its cut-price deal would allow it 'to respond to ever-increasing demand from developing countries' and provide the shots this year for three million children in eight poor countries," working toward immunizing more than 70 million children in 30 million countries by 2016, Reuters notes (Kelland, 4/10). According to a GAVI press release, "This price drop is the result of an acceleration of GAVI's market shaping activities and discussions with manufacturers carried out together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Supply Division of UNICEF, key Alliance partners" (4/10).

"[A]nti-poverty advocates [are] urg[ing] President Obama to 'find political will to end global hunger' during the upcoming G8 Summit at Camp David," Inter Press Service reports. Members of ActionAid last week held signs in front of the White House "that read 'Obama: Find the Will to be a Hunger Hero at the G8,' next to a cutout of the president in a superhero suit," the news service writes (Panagoda, 4/7). And "[a] new report by ONE Campaign said increased donor support for agricultural investment plans in 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Central America could lift about 50 million people out of extreme poverty," Reuters notes. "ONE said it would launch its 'Thrive' campaign in France, Germany, Britain and the United States to highlight the need to tackle the causes of hunger," the news service notes.

Attacks, kidnappings, and the murders of health care workers in the uprisings taking place across the Arab world violate principles held in the Geneva Conventions and international human rights treaties, Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, writes in this Global Post opinion piece. "Recently I briefed the U.S. Congress on eight proximate causes -- which I describe below -- for the recent rise in such abuses across the Arab world," he says. The eight causes include the unaccountability of military forces; medical workers have first-hand knowledge of the extent and responsible party of attacks; health care workers sometimes are viewed as "helping the enemy" and are attacked out of retribution; "perceived political activism"; "discrimination based on religious identity"; and "[o]f course error is a possible cause for violations of medical neutrality," he notes.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah "says development assistance to Ethiopia's health sector has helped save thousands of children's lives in the past year," VOA News reports, noting, "The progress came even as the Horn of Africa was hit by the worst drought in more than half a century." "Twenty years ago, every fifth child died by the age of five. Today, 10 out of 11 make it past their fifth birthday," the news service writes, noting, "Shah says the results are a credit to Ethiopia's effective use of aid dollars."

"The toilet is a magnificent thing. ... Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world's seven billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that must be built and maintained at great expense," a Bloomberg editorial writes. "About 40 percent of all people, an estimated 2.6 billion of them, have no access to even a minimally sanitary facility, according to the World Health Organization," and "[t]he result is illness and early death. Diarrheal diseases, including those linked to improper sanitation, are the second largest killer in the developing world, taking two million lives annually," the editorial continues.

In this New York times opinion piece, Thomas Bollyky, senior fellow for global health, economics and development at the Council on Foreign Relations, comments on the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the World Bank presidency, writing, "For the first time since the World Bank's creation at the end of World War II, the United States is facing a real challenge over the bank's leadership. Leaders of some developing and emerging economies have refused to support President Obama's unexpected choice of Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, to lead the bank." However, "[a]s the bank's executive board prepares to vote on April 18, the Americans are likely to get their way, since an 85 percent supermajority of the bank's voting shares are needed to appoint a president, and the United States is the largest shareholder," he continues.

Late last week, the president and his deputies were linking parts of the health law and economic opportunities as part of their effort to draw support from women voters. At the same time, The Associated Press reports on the challenges GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney faces in his attempts to bridge the gender gap.

According to reports, the Obama administration continues to face stiff criticism from Catholic leaders over its contraception policies. Meanwhile, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has among his health policy advisers two people who are on the record in their opposition to the health law he signed while governor of Massachusetts.

In this New York Times opinion piece, columnist Tina Rosenberg examines a global rise in cholera cases, writing, "The World Health Organization estimates that there are between three million and five million cases of cholera each year, and between 100,000 and 120,000 deaths. New and more virulent strains are emerging in Asia and Africa, and the WHO says that global warming creates even more hospitable conditions for the disease." However, "[c]holera should not be a terror. It is easy to treat if you know how," she writes.

On Thursday at the TEDxChange conference in Berlin, Germany, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, "delivered a powerful case for universal access to contraception for women around the world who need and want it," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. "She described birth control as an idea that, if made policy in both developed and developing countries, could save hundreds of thousands of women's and children's lives each year," the newspaper writes, adding that she "noted being brought up a Catholic and being educated at church schools through high school, even that her mother's great-uncle was a Jesuit priest."