Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Seven out of the eight governments in [Africa's] Sahel ... have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger," Inter Press Service reports. "Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria have all called for international assistance to prevent yet another hunger crisis on the continent," the news service writes, noting that Senegal "has refrained from announcing an emergency, largely for political reasons," as it is holding presidential elections later this year (Palitza, 4/15).

Bird flu experts are scheduled to begin a two-day meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Thursday "to try to settle an unprecedented row over a call to [censor] publication of two scientific studies which detail how to mutate H5N1 bird flu viruses into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic," Reuters reports in an article describing the debate in detail. "But experts say whatever the outcome, no amount of censorship, global regulation or shutting down of research projects could stop rogue scientists getting the tools to create and release a pandemic H5N1 virus if they were intent on evil," the news service adds.

Though 82 percent of Californians think it's important to write down what kind of measures they do or don't want when they're dying, only 23 percent have done so.

In this post in USAID's "IMPACTblog," Carlos dos Reis, foreign service national environmental health officer for Timor-Leste, reports on a trip to the country's remote district of Oecusse with U.S. Ambassador Judith Fergin and USAID/Timor-Leste Mission Director Rick Scott to "inaugurate the new clean water supply system built with the support of USAID." He writes, "Having the chance to see the completed water supply system and witness the benefits that people get from having access to clean water, I'm beginning to believe that a seemingly impossible thing can become possible when people work together," and adds, "I believe that the cooperation between USAID and Oecusse District SAS has really improved the lives of many residents in [the town of] Bobometo by giving them access to clean water and improved sanitation and hygiene" (2/13).

"President Barack Obama [on Monday] proposed a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2013 that aims to slash the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years," the Associated Press reports, and provides an agency-by-agency breakdown of the proposed budget (2/13). "Making up just one percent of the U.S. Government's overall budget, the Department of State/USAID budget totals $51.6 billion," a U.S. Department of State fact sheet notes (2/13). "Overall, funding for the Global Health Initiative (GHI) is down in the FY 2013 request, with most of the reduction coming from HIV/AIDS bilateral amounts," according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Policy Tracker. "Most other areas saw decreases as well, except for family planning and funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance, which increased," the resource adds. The budget plan proposes a total of approximately $8.5 billion for GHI, down more than $300 million from FY 2012, the resource notes, adding that $6.4 billion of that funding would go to PEPFAR, including about $4.5 billion for HIV and $224 million for tuberculosis. The Global Fund receives $1.65 billion in the request, according to the resource (2/13).

"[T]his Valentine's Day, perhaps it's time to celebrate with a gift many of the world's women desperately want and need: reproductive health," Robert Engelman, president of the Worldwatch Institute, writes in this Huffington Post "Global Motherhood" opinion piece. Engelman provides global maternal mortality statistics and notes, "Access to family planning and other reproductive health services safeguard the lives of women and their children and promote families that are emotionally and economically healthy."

"While the headlines out of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings in Davos primarily focus on getting (or keeping) the global economy on track, it's a welcome development when nutrition and health information also rise to the top of the priorities list, reminding world leaders of the inextricable link between nutrition, health and well-being of the people on our planet and that of our global economy," Klaus Kraemer, director of Sight and Life, a not-for-profit nutrition think tank, writes in GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog.

In this Huffington Post opinion piece, Leslie Gerwin, associate director of law and public affairs at Princeton University, reflects on the recent controversy over whether to research and publish data about potentially dangerous strains of the H5N1 bird flu virus, writing, "I am disturbed that so much coverage of this dispute -- so deserving of sober consideration -- is fixated on fear mongering." She notes, "Those opposing research or publication ... predict that publishing results will lead to abuse or misuse by terrorists looking to create a biological weapon. ... Those favoring continuation of the project warn of 'censorship,' a constitutional no-no particularly when involving the 'suppression' of science."

"The leaders of United Nations aid agencies, humanitarian organizations and donor governments will meet on Wednesday in Rome to discuss how to urgently scale up assistance in Africa's Sahel region, where drought and food shortages are threatening millions of lives," the U.N. News Centre reports. "This gathering comes at a critical moment as humanitarian agencies are gearing up their response in an effort to prevent a crisis becoming a disaster," U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran said, according to the news service. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization last year warned that irregular rains during 2011 "would lead to a significant drop in production and increased food insecurity," the news service writes (2/13).

"Health officials in southern China are proposing new legislation to require real-name registration for HIV testing, a move aimed at lowering infection rates that has sparked controversy over personal privacy," the Wall Street Journal's "China Real Time Report" blog reports. It notes that China's Xinhua News Agency recently reported that the legislation, proposed in China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, also would mandate people testing positive for HIV must inform their spouses and partners.

"With 60 percent of the world's population, Asia has one of the largest concentrations globally of aging persons, creating a host of potential challenges, experts warn," including a lack of income and a rise in health problems among the population, IRIN reports. "One in four people in Asia will be 60 or older by the year 2050, rising from one in 10 in 2010, according to the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific," with more than 65 percent of that population being women, IRIN notes. The article includes quotes from experts on how the region will address concerns over social security and pension schemes and an increase in chronic and mental illnesses among the aging population (2/14).