Archives: Morning Breakouts

The Guardian examines the HIV epidemic in Swaziland, writing, "While neighboring countries have made inroads against the disease, the mountain kingdom of one million people continues to suffer setbacks, partly due to cultural norms around sexuality being exacerbated by a financial crisis." According to the news service, Swaziland has "the highest HIV rate in the world, with more than one in four adults estimated to be carrying the virus."

In this post in USAID's "IMPACTblog," Kirsten Gagnaire, global partnership director of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), discusses the program's operations in Bangladesh. The program, "[o]ne of the most prominent mHealth initiatives, launched by Secretary Hillary Clinton on Mother's Day last year," is supported by IDEA/Mobile Solutions, "an office at USAID that champions the use of mobile technology for development issues," the blog notes. Gagnaire writes, "In March, MAMA board representatives visited Bangladesh to meet with MAMA country partners and conduct field visits to meet pregnant women, new mothers and family members who have subscribed to the MAMA mobile phone service, which is called 'Aponjon' in Bangladesh" (4/11).

"Abruptly discontinuing co-trimoxazole -- an antibiotic used to prevent opportunistic infections in HIV-positive people -- can lead to a higher incidence of malaria and diarrhea compared with patients who keep on taking the drug," according to a study conducted by the CDC in eastern Uganda and published by the Oxford Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases in March, PlusNews reports. "The researchers found that 72 percent of the 315 cases of fever reported by study participants occurred among those who had stopped taking co-trimoxazole prophylaxis, and they were also nearly twice more likely to report diarrhea," the news service notes.

Sri Lankan health authorities "have reported a three-fold increase in the number of recorded dengue fever cases in the first quarter of this year," IRIN reports. According to the national Epidemiology Unit, "9,317 dengue cases and 38 deaths were reported in the first three months of 2012, [compared with] 3,103 in the first quarter of 2011," the news service writes, noting that more than half of the cases were recorded "in the country's Western Province, where most of the island's 20 million inhabitants live." Intermittent rain, which allows stagnant water to collect and create mosquito breeding grounds, are expected to continue through April, and "[h]ealth officials agree that removing mosquito breeding sites is the most important step in mitigating risk," according to IRIN. "In May 2010 the government launched a campaign to curb the spread of the disease," and last year the number of cases dropped when compared to 2010, the news service notes (4/11).

In this Washington Post opinion piece, Paul Farmer, a Harvard professor and co-founder of Partners In Health, and John Gershman, a professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, discuss the nomination of Jim Yong Kim, a global health expert and Dartmouth College president, to be president of the World Bank. "Recent claims from some economists that Kim is 'anti-growth' are based on a willful misreading and selective reporting of passages from Kim's co-edited volume 'Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor,' to which we both contributed," they write, adding, "The book's objective was to ask questions about what types of growth and what kinds of policies were beneficial for those struggling to lift themselves out of poverty."

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has been asked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to chair a "U.N. committee tasked with establishing a new set of U.N. millennium development goals [MDGs] to follow the present goals, which expire in 2015," the Guardian reports. "The invitation, accepted by the prime minister, represents a political coup for Cameron, who has stuck to the government's commitment to increase overseas aid to 0.7 percent of U.K. GDP, despite the recession," the newspaper writes. The MDGs -- which "range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015" -- "decide the international targets of global aid channeled bilaterally and multilaterally through organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF," the Guardian notes.

This VOA Special English Health Report examines health needs in Burma, where "[h]ealth workers are warning about the spread of a form of drug-resistant malaria." The report discusses recent political changes in the country, stating, "In the past year, Burma has opened its political system and reached cease-fire agreements with some ethnic militias," but "many aid groups say their jobs have not gotten any easier." The report states, "Until 2009, just three international non-governmental aid organizations had the required approvals to operate inside Burma," but "[m]any were able to get a memorandum of understanding that allowed them to work without an official registration."

Loren Becker, manager of the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) Global Health Regulatory Team, discusses the new East African Community's (EAC) Medicines Regulatory Harmonization initiative, launched at the end of March in Arusha, Tanzania, in this post in GHTC's "Breakthroughs" blog. The program aims "to streamline and harmonize regulatory processes to reduce the time and cost of delivering new products" to improve patient access to necessary therapies, and includes "regulators from six agencies in five East African countries -- Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda -- as well as Zanzibar," she writes. Becker adds, "Over the next several years, support for these efforts -- in the form of technical assistance, training opportunities, and political backing -- from the FDA and other experienced regulatory authorities will be crucial" (Lufkin, 4/11).

The philanthropic organization Dubai Cares has announced a $1 million donation to partner with The END Fund in the establishment "of a school-based deworming program that will treat children in Angola," according to the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases' (NTD) "End the Neglect" blog. "The END Fund's chairman William Campbell stated that, 'This pioneering investment in partnership with The END Fund adds further momentum behind our goal of eradicating Africa's seven most prevalent NTDs by 2020,'" the blog notes (Patel, 4/11).

A new Washington Post/ABC poll uncovered skepticism among Americans about whether the health law decision expected from the Supreme Court justices in June will be rooted "on the basis of the law." The poll also found that public support for the overhaul hit an all-time low, with the mandate being a bigger sticking point than ever. Meanwhile, according to The Associated Press, some of these views may be the result of "misconceptions" that resulted from the oral arguments.

A Financial Times analysis examines how the international community is working "to ensure scientific work can proceed without falling prey to accidental leaks or malevolent intent," following controversy surrounding two studies on the H5N1 bird flu virus. The article states that "while much discussion has focused on the 'virtual' leakage of such studies through the very fact of publication, allowing the unscrupulous to read and replicate the work, another important risk has received far less attention: the accidental 'physical' leakage from the growing number of laboratories en

This PATH Blog post examines PATH's work in malaria through OneWorld Health, a non-profit drug development program. Since 2004, "when OneWorld Health formed a partnership to develop an alternative source of the malaria drug artemisinin, ... OneWorld Health, which became an affiliate of PATH late last year, [has] quietly forged relationships with public and private partners, creating the Artemisinin Project to take the work from research to commercialization," the blog writes. "Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the partners worked toward providing an affordable and reliable source of high-quality artemisinin -- one not dependent on planting schedules, the weather, or the fluctuating market," the blog adds (Donnelly, 4/10).

The number of people living with dementia is expected to double to 65.7 million by 2030 and more than triple by 2050, with "the [current estimated] cost of treating and caring for those with the condition at $604 billion a year," according to a report released Wednesday by the WHO and Alzheimer's Disease International, Agence France-Presse reports (4/11). "Dementia affects people in all countries, with more than half (58 percent) living in low- and middle-income countries," and "[b]y 2050, this is likely to rise to more than 70 percent," according to a WHO press release.

Medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has expressed concern over proposed cuts to PEPFAR under the White House FY 2013 budget proposal, "saying it will undermine the president's own goals" of "treat[ing] six million people infected with HIV around the world by the end of 2013," VOA News reports. While President Obama "has pledged to expand PEPFAR to include more people, his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2013 cuts more than a half-billion dollars from" bilateral HIV/AIDS programs, VOA writes.

"As we have seen in our work in Haiti and around the world, shoes are a first level of defense when it comes to good health, and are a great complement to the Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Control program IMA World Health implements in Haiti," Rick Santos, president and CEO of IMA World Health, writes in the Huffington Post Blog, commemorating One Day Without Shoes, observed on Tuesday. "In addition to preventing cuts and injuries that can become infected, shoes can help prevent the spread of hookworm -- which affects an estimated 740 million people globally according to a World Health Organization estimate -- and other soil-transmitted diseases that can enter through the feet," he notes, adding, "Shoes are especially helpful when combined with other programs designed to keep children and families healthy."

"U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday announced the appointment of 27 world leaders to address the issue of maternal and child nutrition in order to secure a future for nations around the world," Xinhua/Shanghai Daily reports (4/11). UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake chaired the first meeting of the Lead Group for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, which brought together the "leaders of countries, organizations and sectors working to improve nutrition," the U.N. News Centre reports. "The SUN Movement focuses on the critical 1,000-day window between pregnancy and a child's second birthday, when proper nutrition can mean the difference between health and sickness, life and death," according to the news service. "We must invest now in programs to prevent stunting or risk diminishing the impact of other investments in education, health and child protection," Lake said, the news service notes (4/10).

"From the rural villages in northern Uganda to the bustling city of Kampala, the poverty-fighting programs I visited last week have something notable in common: they demonstrate how integrated programming can help achieve sustainable changes in the lives [of] women, men and their families," Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA, writes in the Huffington Post Blog. "Issues such as health care, education and economic empowerment cannot be addressed in a vacuum. Thus, effective programs need to tackle the multiple root causes of poverty," she writes, adding, "There is no doubt that a woman's economic empowerment is very much interconnected to her health and the well-being of her children."

"Senior United Nations officials [on Tuesday] made impassioned appeals to the international community to make more resources available to assist millions of people affected by the severe food and nutrition crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa, cautioning that global inaction could lead to a humanitarian disaster," the U.N. News Centre reports (4/10). "UNICEF's Executive Director Anthony Lake said at least one million -- and possibly up to 1.5 million -- children in the region face acute, severe malnutrition, putting them at risk of death from starvation or disease," the Associated Press/Washington Post writes, adding, "Unless donor countries provide more funds, 'the result will be many children will die and many families will suffer,' he said" (4/10).