Archives: Morning Breakouts

In an analysis (.pdf) published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, a team led by virologist Peter Palese of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York raises questions about the WHO's estimated fatality rate from H5N1 bird flu, saying the rate of 59 percent is based on "an estimate of human bird flu cases that is simply too low," Reuters reports. The WHO has recorded 586 cases of people infected by bird flu, and of those, 346 have died, the news agency notes (Begley, 2/23). Palese and colleagues say "it is not possible to determine an accurate fatality rate for H5N1 infections based on" available data, but "if one assumes a one to two percent infection rate in exposed populations, this would likely translate into millions of people who have been infected, worldwide" (Wang et al., 2/24). And in a paper published Friday in mBio, the journal of the American Society for Microbiology, Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota and a member of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and a colleague conclude that "[t]he available seroepidemiologic data for human H5N1 infection support the current WHO-reported case-fatality rates of 30% to 80%" (Osterholm/Kelley, 2/24).

In this post in the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog, the "third in a series of conversations with officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussing the CDC's role in global HIV and tuberculosis research and development," Science Speaks interviews John Vertefeuille, the country director for CDC in Haiti, "about his time heading the Global AIDS Program in Nigeria, efforts to extend HIV prevention messages to youth in Tanzania with cell phones, and a brief update on current immunization efforts underway in Haiti," according to the blog. In Haiti, Vertefeuille "leads a team of 55 and manages an annual HIV budget of approximately $90 million and post-earthquake and cholera budgets of $170 million," the blog notes (Mazzotta, 2/23).

In this AlertNet opinion piece, Simon Bush, director of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) at Sightsavers, an international NGO helping people with visual impairments in developing countries, examines efforts to rid Africa of onchocerciasis -- a blinding NTD. "In 1947 when Sightsavers' founder, Sir John Wilson, coined the phrase river blindness to describe the almost unpronounceable disease, ... there was little choice for those living in areas where what we now call a neglected tropical disease was endemic," he writes, adding, "Today, although the World Health Organization estimates that 120 million people are at risk of river blindness, there is hope."

In a speech delivered at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome on Thursday, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told IFAD, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that the "approach being used today to fight against poverty and hunger is outdated and inefficient" and asked the agencies "to unite around a common global target for sustainable productivity growth to guide and measure their efforts," a Gates Foundation press release states. "Gates also announced nearly $200 million in grants, bringing to more than $2 billion the foundation's commitment to smallholder farmers since the agriculture program began in 2006," according to the press release (2/23).

GOP candidates sparred during last night's face-off over a range of issues including the Massachusetts health law that Mitt Romney signed while that state's governor, family planning and contraception, and abortion.

Bloomberg reports that, based on a previous opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia could be key to the fate of the health law.

"Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development [on Wednesday] launched its second call for innovative prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the world," a USAID press release states. With the launch of the second round of the Saving Lives at Birth partnership, "the partners aim to invest at least $50 million in groundbreaking and sustainable projects with the potential to accelerate substantial progress against maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths at the community level," according to the press release (2/22).

"Researchers say they've developed the first vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) -- a disease that affects 500,000 people each year and has been called the 'parasitic version of HIV,'" although the diseases are unrelated, U.S. News reports. "The vaccine took researchers more than two decades to develop and entered Phase I trials in recent weeks, according to Steve Reed, founder of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), the vaccine's developer," the news service writes (Koebler, 2/22).