Archives: Morning Breakouts

On Monday, "a girl admitted to a hospital in West Bengal with polio-like symptoms sparked worries that India's battle against polio may not be over yet," the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog reports, noting, "The suspected polio case ... comes just two weeks after the WHO removed India from the list of countries where polio is endemic" (Stancati, 3/14). "'It is a suspected case of polio. In medical parlance, the symptoms are called acute flaccid paralysis. The patient is under observation,' Kumar Kanti Das, superintendent of Baruipur Subdivisional Hospital, [where the girl was admitted,] told the local Hindustan Times newspaper," the Guardian writes (Burke, 3/13).

"After seven years of research, the world's largest study of preventative tuberculosis (TB) therapy has found that untargeted, community-wide distribution of TB prevention drugs did not improve TB control in South African gold mines," PlusNews reports. "Conducted among 27,000 gold-mine employees in 15 mines, the Thibela TB study tested the theory that treating an entire community with the first-line TB drug isoniazid could result in long-lasting reductions in active TB cases and TB prevalence," the news service writes (3/9). The study found that "provid[ing] community-wide isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT)" did "not improve TB control," according to Health-e. "However, evidence showed that there were 63 percent fewer TB cases among individuals in the program during the first nine months of the program, providing reassurance that IPT works for people who take it," the news service notes (Thom, 3/14).

"On Monday, the Indian Patent Office effectively ended [German drug maker] Bayer's monopoly for its [cancer drug] Nexavar and issued its first-ever compulsory license allowing local generic maker Natco Pharma to make and sell the drug cheaply in India," Reuters reports. "India's move to strip ... Bayer of its exclusive rights to [Nexavar] has set a precedent that could extend to other treatments, including modern HIV/AIDS drugs, in a major blow to global pharmaceutical firms, experts say," the news service writes, noting, "It is only the second time a nation has issued a compulsory license for a cancer drug after Thailand did so on four drugs between 2006 and 2008." Thailand also has issued compulsory licenses for HIV/AIDS and heart disease medications, according to Reuters (Kulkarni/Foy, 3/13).

In this RH Reality Check blog post, Mandy Van Deven, online administrator for International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR), discusses how PROFAMILIA-Dominican Republic, an IPPF/WHR member association, "has integrated HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and testing into its extensive clinical sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services." She writes, "There are two key elements to PROFAMILIA's integrated approach: a focus on a broad range of vulnerable groups -- from youth to women and immigrant populations -- and a staunch commitment to fighting the stigma, discrimination and gender-based violence often associated with an HIV-positive status" (3/13).

"Ten months after the West African country [of Cote d'Ivoire] started to emerge from a presidential election crisis during which almost all hospitals and clinics had to shut down for a good six months because they had been vandalized, looted and occupied, the new government under President Alassane Ouattara is trying to make public health care a priority," including implementing "[a] new national health regulation, which came into effect on Mar. 1, that offers free health services to pregnant women, children under five years and people suffering from malaria," Inter Press Service reports. "But in a country recovering from 12 years of political instability since a military coup in December 1999 that was followed by 10 years of [former President Laurent] Gbagbo's autocratic rule, rebuilding a crumbling public health care system takes time," IPS writes, adding, "Hospitals have been suffering from lack of skilled staff, basic equipment and technology for years."

"Poor hospital care poses a risk to the lives of many patients in the developing world," according to a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Tuesday, BBC News reports (McGrath, 3/13). For the study, which was supported by the WHO, researchers from the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation "looked at patients from 26 hospitals altogether across eight countries" -- Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, South Africa and Yemen -- and "found that harm to patients caused by their health care rather than their disease is a major public health problem and consistent with previous reports from the developed world," according to a BMJ press release.

Daniel Wolfe, director of the International Harm Reduction Development Program, part of the Open Society Public Health Program, writes in the Open Society Foundations' blog about "a recent joint U.N. statement calling for the immediate closure of the hundreds of centers in which drug users are detained in the name of treatment," saying the statement "came not a moment too soon." He continues, "This call for closure of drug detention camps comes after years of horrifying reports of abuses in these facilities." According to Wolfe, "The message, endorsed by agencies such as UNAIDS, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and the International Labor Organization, is unequivocal. Locking people up and abusing them in the name of drug rehabilitation is ineffective. It violates human rights. And countries shouldn't do it" (3/13).

In this "Health Affairs Blog" post, Sachin Jain, a physician and former HHS adviser, explores the use of the term "strategy" in global health, writing "the term remains variably used and ill-defined." He "offer[s] a definition enumerated for use by for-profit firms: Strategy is the unique set of activities and operating structures that an organization puts in place to deliver value to its customers," and offers explanation about each segment of the definition. He concludes, "Strategy requires that organizations puzzle through different sets of 'conflicting virtues' -- funders, activities, customers -- and establish a priority order among them. None of these decisions are without their challenges; deciding to clearly define and grapple with them, however, will be an important step towards greater organizational effectiveness and results" (3/12).

The Democratic National Committee will do targeted mailings to improve the law's image. In addition, the Obama campaign posted an interactive website to spell out the measure's benefits.