Archives: Morning Breakouts

"The World Bank boasts that it has positioned itself as a 'global leader' in reproductive health, especially for youth and the poor," but in 2011, it dedicated "just 0.2 percent of its $43 billion budget" to reproductive health projects, and much of that money was provided as loans, which can "leave poor countries indebted and threaten to divert domestic spending away from vital public health services," Elizabeth Arend, program coordinator at Gender Action, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog." In addition, "[t]here is a striking mismatch between countries' maternal mortality rates and the bank's spending on reproductive health," Arend states, citing the examples of Sierra Leone, where the lifetime average risk of dying from pregnancy or childbirth is one in 35 and the World Bank provides $7.43 per person, versus Niger, Liberia, or Somalia, where women "face an average lifetime one in 17 risk of maternal death, yet these countries receive no reproductive health funding from the bank at all."

"South Africa wants to test hundreds of thousands of miners for tuberculosis [TB] and ensure sufferers get treatment over the next year," David Mametja, head of South African National Department of Health's TB program, said Tuesday at a workshop organized by the Stop TB Partnership, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. Mametja "said the government is concerned the high prevalence of the disease among miners is holding an entire region back in the fight against TB," and that while "it may be impossible to reach the nearly 600,000 miners in South Africa in one year, even those at highest risk in the gold industry, ... setting an ambitious target is a way to show 'it's not business as usual,'" the AP writes.

The achievement of meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for safe drinking water "shows that where there is a will, it is possible to truly transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people for the better," Sanjay Wijesekera, chief of water, sanitation and hygiene for UNICEF, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog." "Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where progress towards achieving the target is off-track, 273 million additional people gained access to drinking water since 1990," he writes, adding, "So, we should raise our hats to the governments, organizations, communities and individuals who put great effort and resources into making this happen."

"Developing countries have already achieved their 2015 [Millennium Development Goal (MDG)] of drastically reducing the number of people without regular access to improved drinking water, though much of the credit lies with India and China," UNICEF and the WHO said in a joint report (.pdf) on Tuesday, Reuters reports (Charbonneau, 3/6). "According to the [WHO] and UNICEF joint monitoring program for water supply and sanitation (JMP), between 1990 and 2010 more than two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and protected wells" and "at the end of 2010, 89 percent of the population -- 6.1 billion people -- now used improved drinking water sources, one percent more than the 88 percent target contained in [MDG] number seven, set in 2000," the Guardian writes (Ford, 3/6).

"Measles has killed 126 children in Yemen since mid-2011, a consequence of the breakdown of basic health services during the year-long political crisis," and "[i]n response ... , the Yemeni government has appealed for international assistance and an outbreak-response vaccination campaign will begin in the hardest-hit regions on 10 March," IRIN reports. Since mid-2011, "3,767 cases of measles have been confirmed, resulting in 126 deaths," according to the Ministry of Health, whereas "in the three years from the beginning of 2007 until the end of 2009, the ministry reported a total of 211 cases and no deaths due to measles," the news service notes.