Archives: Morning Breakouts

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "on Friday appealed for an extra $69.8 million to aid 790,000 vulnerable households in the drought-hit Sahel region in West Africa," Agence France-Presse/Vanguard reports (3/10). "In a news release, the [FAO] said that at least 15 million people are estimated to be at risk of food insecurity in countries in the Sahel, including 5.4 million people in Niger, three million in Mali, 1.7 million in Burkina Faso and 3.6 million in Chad, as well as hundreds of thousands in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania," the U.N. News Centre writes (3/9). FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said, "We need to act to prevent further deterioration of the food security situation and to avoid a full-scale food and nutrition crisis," according to AFP (3/10).

"With its health-care system increasingly eclipsed by rivals, India has a plan to nearly double public spending on health over the next five years," a goal that would "lift annual spending on health to 2.5 percent of the country's economic output, from 1.4 percent," the Washington Post reports. The scheme is "aimed at giving free medicine to all Indians at government facilities, setting up free ambulances in rural areas, doubling the number of trained health workers, and lifting millions of young children and women out of chronic malnutrition and preventable deaths," the newspaper writes.

"[T]he United States, with its high salaries and technological innovation, is ... the world's most powerful magnet for doctors, attracting more every year than Britain, Canada and Australia -- the next most popular destinations for migrating doctors -- combined," the New York Times Magazine reports in a story on how the promise of a better salary and working conditions is drawing newly trained doctors away from their countries to the U.S.

Also in the news, a study in the journal American Politics Research quantifies in percentage points the support Democratic incumbents lost as a result of voting for the 2010 health overhaul.

USAID on Thursday published a Global Health E-News Mini March Edition in commemoration of International Women's Day, which was celebrated on Thursday. Topics covered in the special issue include USAID's new gender policy, launched last week at a White House event; the sixth International Women of Courage Awards, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer on Thursday; and the role of family planning to reduce poverty (3/8).

In this interview in World Politics Review's "Trend Lines," Peter Navario, an adjunct associate professor of public policy at New York University and a former global health fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses the evolution South Africa's HIV/AIDS policy over the last decade, the country's current relationship with pharmaceutical companies, and how South African President Jacob Zuma's HIV/AIDS policy is received in the region and by international donors. "South Africa has gone from global laggard to playing a leading role in the global HIV response," Navario said, adding that the country's "policies are in lockstep with World Health Organization guidelines, and an aggressive new strategic plan aims to tackle HIV-related stigma, meet 80 percent of treatment need and cut new infections in half by 2016" (3/7).

"The health status of women is linked to their fundamental freedoms and empowerment," Susan Blumenthal, public health editor at the Huffington Post and former U.S. assistant surgeon general, and Jean Guo, a health policy intern at the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress, write in the website's "Healthy Living" blog in a post marking International Women's Day, which was celebrated on Thursday. "With 3.4 billion women worldwide, women's health is a global issue today. Yet, societal and environmental factors including poverty, discrimination, and violence are undermining the advancement of women's health," they write.

In a letter (.pdf) published Wednesday in the Lancet, officials from the CDC refute "point by point" three letters previously published in the journal that were critical of the agency's Center for Global Health, ScienceInsider reports. Lancet Editor Richard Horton on February 11 "published criticisms of the institution's Center for Global Health that he received from an anonymous letter writer" and then "ran complaints made by two more unnamed critics of the CDC center on March 3," the news service states, adding, "As Horton noted, the letters 'raise questions about leadership, management of resources, proper use of the CDC's authority and power, and the scientific rigor of CDC research.'"

"As we honor the enormous impact women have on their families and communities worldwide, we also call on lawmakers to do more for global maternal and newborn health," Former White House Press Secretaries Mike McCurry and Dana Perino write in a post in The Hill's "Congress Blog," marking International Women's Day, which was celebrated on Thursday. "When we reach out with simple interventions to promote health and save women's lives, we build international allies for life," they write.