Archives: Morning Breakouts

Will McKitterick, a research assistant with the Center for Global Development (CGD), in this "Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance" blog post summarizes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "grueling marathon of Congressional committee hearings in defense of the FY2013 international affairs budget request." The nine hours of hearings "ran the gamut of U.S. priorities in national security and foreign policy," McKitterick writes, adding, "Congressional leaders seemed alarmed by reductions in global health spending and raised specific concerns over the administration's ability to meet its commitments to its PEPFAR goal of placing six million people on life-sustaining treatment by 2013. Secretary Clinton assured the committees that cuts would be balanced by consolidating programs, finding efficiencies, improving partners' capacity, and shifting more responsibilities to host countries" (3/2).

Why have effective, "simple tools such as Medication Assisted Therapy (methadone, buprenorphine) and clean needle-exchange services" -- methods that are "very effective in decreasing drug abuse and reducing risk of infection with HIV, hepatitis C and other diseases"

IRIN examines ColaLife -- a pilot project set to start in Zambia in September 2012 that will ship single-dose anti-diarrhea kits (ADKs) in crates of Coca-Cola bottles in an effort to increase the coverage of oral rehydration salts (ORS) for the treatment of diarrhea in children in the developing world. "Three-quarters of [diarrhea-related] deaths could be prevented with a simple course of [ORS] combined with zinc tablets, at a cost of just $0.50 per patient," but, "despite being heavily promoted by the World Health Organization since the 1970s, fewer than 40 percent of child diarrhea cases in developing countries are treated with ORS," the news service writes.

"An alliance of 200 U.S. aid groups has written to the head of the CIA to protest against its use of a doctor to help track Osama bin Laden, linking the agency's ploy to the polio crisis in Pakistan," the Guardian reports, noting Pakistan recorded the highest number of polio cases in the world last year. The CIA used a "fake vaccination scheme in the town of Abbottabad ... in order to gain entry to the house where it was suspected that the al-Qaida chief was living, and extract DNA samples from his family members," the newspaper writes. But the plan "provided seeming proof for a widely held belief in Pakistan, fuelled by religious extremists, that polio drops are a western conspiracy to sterilize the population," according to the Guardian.

"More than 170 [of Zimbabwe's] parliamentarians from across the political divide have resolved to undergo voluntary counseling and HIV testing in a bid to encourage the grassroots to follow suit," and "the 150 male members in the 175-member group have also resolved to be circumcised," a Herald editorial states. "Members of Parliament are regarded as role models whose power of influence in society is immense," the editorial writes, adding, "And as leaders, their message is readily received particularly if it is coupled by exemplary behavior in the communities they serve."

"Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a former head of the House committees on science and the judiciary, and currently vice chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, last week sent a 'fact-finding letter' to White House science adviser John Holdren, asking pointed questions about how the U.S. government has handled the controversy" surrounding two studies that showed how H5N1 bird flu virus could be manipulated to become transmissible among ferrets, a model for humans, "and questioning whether it should have funded the two flu studies," ScienceInsider reports. "The [Obama] Administration's response has appeared ad hoc, delayed, and inadequate," Sensenbrenner writes, adding, "An ad hoc approach is inadequate to balance the priorities of public health and the free flow of academic ideas," according to the article, which includes the full text of the letter.

"Kenya's most recent male circumcision rapid results initiative failed to meet its target, and officials are stepping up efforts to identify and fix the problems that could foil the government's campaign to circumcise more than one million men by 2013," PlusNews reports. "Conducted between November and December 2011, the initiative aimed to circumcise 70,000 men over a 30-day period, but results released in February show that only 40,000 men were circumcised," the news service writes, adding, "This is the first time the annual initiative -- which began in 2008 -- has failed to reach its target."