Archives: Morning Breakouts

"The World Health Organization warned Monday that the battle against the age-old scourge of leprosy is not yet over, with more than 5,000 new cases reported yearly in the Western Pacific, where the disease was declared eliminated in 1991," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports (2/13). "'Leprosy is still much alive in the Western Pacific,' said Shin Young-Soo, WHO regional director," at a meeting of national leprosy control program managers from the Western Pacific, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C writes, adding, "Policymakers, health workers and the public should not be misled that the disease is totally gone and must continue to fight it, he said."

Pakistan and Afghanistan, "the world's two worst polio-affected countries," have "decided to form a joint block under the World Health Organization to eradicate the infectious disease -- which causes motor paralysis and the atrophy of skeletal muscles, often resulting in permanent physical disability or deformity -- by December 2012," Inter Press Service reports. "The decision was made last year by the Technical Advisory Board (TAG), which is responsible for developing new strategies to wipe out the disease globally," the news service notes.

Foreign Policy examines "India's flourishing fertility treatment business," a multi-billion dollar industry that "has earned India the dubious reputation of being the world's baby factory." While "regulation has not kept pace with the proliferation of clinics" and some "facilities have been accused of a litany of shocking abuses," "[t]he Indian government is gearing up to pass a new law to regulate the fertility business," the magazine writes. The article focuses on "one pressing issue [that] has remained beyond the purview of regulation: How old is too old to get pregnant?" and discusses post-menopausal aged women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments in order to become pregnant (Chopra, 2/10).

The announcement at the end of January of the largest coordinated effort to fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) provides "more reason to hope that we may soon see a future free of these diseases," Adetokunbo Lucas, former director of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, writes in a Daily Monitor opinion piece. "This new coordinated action will take these previous efforts to a whole new level," he writes, adding, "Together, these partners have pledged to increase the supply of existing drugs and invest and collaborate on research to accelerate the development of new and better drugs."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed a vote on the birth-control requirement while White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said the compromise is the "right approach."

The Conference of Catholic Bishops said they have "grave moral concerns." The administration says they never expected an endorsement from the bishops.

Two prominent state attorneys general examined the health law case before the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that some senators are pushing to get television cameras in the Supreme Court.

Rick Santorum uses the issue to try to rally the conservative base, while some Democratic strategists call the White House's embrace of contraceptive coverage a political plus with young, female voters.

In this post in the ONE blog, Brooks Keene, policy adviser for CARE's water team, "makes the argument that foreign aid should benefit the poor first and foremost," noting, "As we approach World Water Day on March 22, CARE, [the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)] and WaterAid have published a report card [.pdf] on how well" the Water for the Poor Act, passed by Congress in 2005, "has been implemented seven years down the line." She writes, "In the absence of a strategy, USAID has gone ahead with water, sanitation and hygiene programs, but much of the effort and dollars have not gone to benefit the poor." She concludes by recommending several steps USAID could take "to spur concerted targeting" (2/9).