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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog published several posts in response to the TEDxChange: "The Big Picture" presentation delivered by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the foundation, in Berlin on Thursday.
"The advancement of women's health and their rights is one of the core principles of President Barack Obama's Global Health Initiative," a VOA editorial states, adding, "And so it is that the United States has rolled out a new initiative that will tackle one of the greatest threats to women's health, HIV/AIDS, by attacking another scourge: gender-based violence [GBV]." According to the editorial, "Physical violence or the threat of physical violence and coercion are all associated with HIV transmission for women of all ages," which is why "[i]n mid-March, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer and U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby announced an initiative to provide $4.65 million in small grants to grassroots organizations to address gender-based violence issues."
"Teenage pregnancies are on the rise in Guatemala, along with the drop-out rate in schools, family breakdown and many other related social ills," Inter Press Service reports, adding that the "impoverished Central American country of 14 million people has an adolescent (under-20) birth rate of 114 per 1,000 women in rural areas, according to the National Mother and Child Health Survey for 2008-2009." The article discusses efforts by the government and non-profit organizations to prevent unwanted pregnancies, including laws allowing for basic maternity services and sex education classes.
The Wall Street Journal reports that "[a] long list of development experts, government officials and news organizations around the world have mounted a rebellion of sorts" in response to the nomination of Jim Yong Kim, a global health expert and Dartmouth College president, to head the World Bank, as "[m]any of them say the two other candidates, Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, are better qualified for the post." According to the newspaper, "The race marks the first time the selection of a World Bank president has been contested," but "[d]espite the controversy" surrounding the nomination, Kim "is still virtually certain to secure the post because of his support from the U.S., the bank's largest shareholder."
The WHO on April 7 celebrated the founding of the organization in 1948 and World Health Day, "by focusing on aging, including a host of events, research and information under the theme, 'Good health adds life to years,'" CNN reports (4/7). "Contrary to common perceptions, the WHO reports by 2050, 80 percent of the world's older people will be living in low-and middle-income countries -- not in the wealthier nations," and "a new analysis shows the key reasons for ill health in older people are from non-communicable diseases," VOA News writes (Schlein, 4/7).
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about how both Democrats and Republicans are working to woo Seniors -- Medicare politices are central to this effort.
Democrats are pointing to the health law (including its contraceptive coverage) while Republicans are playing up their solutions to fix the economy.
A selection of state health policy stories from across the country.
In this Washington Post opinion piece, columnist Michael Gerson examines anti-malaria efforts in Zambia, writing, "Zambia has been the main test case for anti-malaria efforts during the last several years -- a focus of funding by the U.S. government, the [Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation] and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria." He continues, "Now the Anglican Church, international aid groups and philanthropists ... are attempting to fill remaining gaps in bednet coverage in remote border areas."
"Trade deals are threatening generic drugs -- we need new ways to incentivize affordable drug development," Daniele Dionisio, head of the research project Geopolitics, Public Health and Access to Medicines (GESPAM) and a member of the European Parliament Working Group on Innovation, Access to Medicines and Poverty-Related Diseases, writes in this SciDev.Net opinion piece. "Just under three billion people live on less than $2 per day, in resource-limited countries where key medicines protected by patents are unaffordable," he writes, adding, "Free-trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and governments adopting intellectual property (IP) policies that favor the brand pharmaceutical sector are also threatening the trade of legitimate generic medicines."
Each casts the other's plans for entitlement programs, such as Medicare, as dangerous.
"Over 600 parliamentarians from more than 100 countries" met in Kampala, Uganda, this week for the 126th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly, where participants discussed child and maternal health and nutrition, UNICEF reports in a news article. Speaking at the opening session, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said, "The damage [malnutrition] causes to a child's development is irreversible. ... I can't think of any greater inequity than condemning children, while in the womb, to a loss of their ability, of their right, to live fully
In health care marketplace news, outlets examine coverage for emergency room visits and patients' efforts to get direct lab reports. Also, a new study finds that the health care workforce is continuing to grow.
Maryland is moving aggressively to implement health reform as it passes legislation creating health insurance exchanges. In other news, Oregon and Massachusetts officials make plans to overhaul their state-based health care systems, and Washington state's attorney general is talking positively about the law's Medicaid expansion after previously criticizing it.
A strain of malaria that is resistant to artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) is spreading along the Thai-Myanmar border and has the potential to spread to Africa if efforts to effectively treat and prevent the disease are not undertaken, according to a study published in the Lancet on Friday, Reuters reports (Lyn, 4/5). Since 2008, patients treated with ACT have been slower to clear the parasite than previously, "[a]nd this precursor to resistance seems to be spreading, despite efforts to carefully use artemisinin (by giving it in combination with other drugs) to avoid the emergence of resistance," Scientific American writes.
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones used authority, granted under a year-old state law, to call out the rates as unreasonable. In Arizona, Maricopa County raised premiums on hundreds of county workers who either failed a saliva testing for nicotine or refused to take it.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission made recommendations to Congress for changes to the program. It's not clear if Congress will accept the proposals.
Inter Press Service examines how "[m]any NGOs, U.N. agencies and parliamentarians continue to call on governments around the world to do more for women's reproductive rights" through development assistance. The article highlights remarks made by Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at a conference on development aid held in Paris this week, where she said development aid that benefits women can help "a society to grow and develop" and eventually allow nations to become less dependent on aid.
"Rain may be 'significantly' below average in the Horn of Africa's main growing season, potentially threatening a region still recovering from famine in 2011, the Famine Early Warning Systems [FEWS] network reported" in a statement (.pdf) on its website on Tuesday, Bloomberg writes. "Rain from March through May in the region, which includes Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, is expected to begin late and amount to only 60 percent to 85 percent of average, the U.S.-funded provider of food-security warnings" said in the statement, according to Bloomberg (Ruitenberg, 4/4). "The report warned of 'significant impacts on crop production, pasture regeneration, and the replenishment of water resources' in a region that in 2011 suffered one of its worst drought-related food crises in decades," IRIN reports (4/5).
GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's health care consulting company filed for bankruptcy Thursday. The Center for Health Transformation charged up to $200,000 annually to drugmakers, insurers and hospitals for Gingrich's advice and may have suffered after he stepped down to seek the GOP nomination for president, reports say.
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