Archives: Morning Breakouts

"More than seven months overdue, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria grant will finally be released to key South African AIDS organizations that have been struggling to survive," PlusNews writes, adding, "Some were on the verge of shutting down." According to the news service, "The Global Fund released US$7,106,426.91 to the South African National Treasury on February 6, the same day seven of the grant's sub-recipients delivered an open letter to Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi, pleading for intervention."

"Decades of war, neglect, and lack of development have left South Sudan with nine out of 10 of th[e] key neglected tropical diseases [NTDs] -- all but Chagas disease, which is endemic to South America," and health workers in the new nation are hoping that the recent formation of a large public-private partnership to combat the diseases "will finally help to have an impact on South Sudan's appalling health indicators," IRIN reports. With only one in four people in South Sudan able to access health care, people "seek other explanations for diseases such as sleeping sickness, as they are liable to blame its symptoms on witchcraft and only seek medical attention as a last resort," the news service writes. The nation has the highest incidence of guinea worm disease and the third-highest incidence of sleeping sickness, according to IRIN (2/23).

In this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog, Mandy Goldberg, global health research and development (R&D) advocacy intern at Research!America, shares the organization's findings about the state of New Jersey from an analysis conducted in target states to measure the health and economic impact of global health R&D in the U.S. "Despite ranking eleventh in population size, New Jersey ranks third in R&D investment among states, thanks mainly to robust private-sector investment," she writes, adding, "R&D spending in New Jersey increased by 11.4 percent in 2010, and global R&D spending was up by $1.4 billion, according to a 2011 report by the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey, implying even more future economic benefits for the state" (Halnon, 2/21).

This post in KPLU's "Humanosphere" blog examines the "gap between the disease burden of mental illness and the amount of funding and attention devoted to solving the problem," referencing a post published Friday in the Global Health Interest Forum's "Blog of Scientists for Global Health," written by Paul Southworth, a visiting scholar on malaria and vaccine science at the NIH. The blog provides a breakdown of the global burden of disease in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and notes, "As you can see from the pie chart, mental illness (aka 'neuropsychiatric disorders') is the biggest slice in the pie. Yet it is rarely even mentioned at global health meetings or confabs, says Southworth" (Paulson, 2/21).

In this post in the Results for Development Institute's "Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment" blog, Project Director Jean Arkedis and Program Associate Edith Han interview Megumi Gordon, deputy director for malaria at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), "to take an exclusive look into the [Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm)] and its innovative mechanism to increase access to antimalarials." Megumi discusses "AMFm's current status, early lessons, and the latest in the ongoing -- and sometimes contentious -- debate about whether to subsidize [artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs)] in the private sector" (2/22).

"More people in developed countries are overweight or obese than ever before, dooming them to years of ill health, pushing up health care costs and piling more pressure on health systems, a report [.pdf] by the OECD found on Tuesday," Reuters reports. Though the report found that obesity rates are diverse -- "from a low of four percent in Japan and Korea to 30 percent or more in the United States and Mexico" - "in more than half of the 34 OECD countries, at least one in two people is now overweight or obese, and rates are projected to rise further," according to the news agency.

"India is lagging in its effort to reach United Nations goals to reduce poverty and improve health and sanitation, but has shown significant progress boosting education, treating AIDS and addressing environmental concerns," Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said last week, the New York Times' "India Ink" blog reports. According to an Asia Pacific Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report (.pdf) released last week, which "graded the progress of the eight millennium goals using 22 socio-economic indicators ..., India has reached goals set in seven indicators out of 22 and is on track to achieve three others, but is lagging behind in 12," the blog notes.

The WHO "is calling on all Afghans to vaccinate their children after a recent measles outbreak that has been made worse by severe weather that hampers access to immediate treatment as well as low immunization coverage," the U.N. News Centre reports. At least "20 children have died due to measles and pneumonia in the western provinces of Ghor and Baghdis," the news service notes (2/22). "As the outbreak has grown more serious, Afghan authorities and the WHO set up five temporary clinics and vaccinated more than 3,600 children in the outbreak zone, while treating more than 6,000 patients, health officials said," according to the Los Angeles Times' "World Now" blog (2/21).

A recently released OECD report (.pdf) "spells out the toll obesity can take on one's health and on health care costs," Indianapolis Star reporter Barb Berggoetz writes in this Star opinion piece, adding, "Obese people die on average eight to 10 years sooner than people at normal weight." She notes that, according to the report, "[o]besity -- responsible for between five to 10 percent of total health spending in the U.S. and one to three percent in most countries -- will cause a rapid rise in health spending in coming years, as obesity related diseases set in."

HHS is sending $229 million in health insurance exchange establishment grants to ten states, the agency announced Wednesday.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday added an extra 30 minutes to the time provided for oral arguments, bumping up the total to six hours over three days.

"South Asian nations are making the least progress in the Asia-Pacific region on meeting key development goals, which they pledged to achieve by 2015," Bindu Lohani, vice president for sustainable development at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), said on Friday at the launch of a U.N. progress report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Reuters reports (Bhalla, 2/19). The Asia-Pacific region already has reached the MDG of halving the incidence of poverty, "but still has high levels of hunger as well as child and maternal mortality," the report said, according to Asian Scientist (2/21).

The Kaiser Family Foundation held a live "In Focus" webcast on Tuesday "to assess President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal and potential implications for global health," the foundation writes on its website. The webcast features a panel of global health policy experts, moderated by Jen Kates, vice president and director of global health & HIV policy at the foundation, "who analyze the Administration's proposal and how it compares to current funding levels, what may happen as the budget winds its way through Congress, and the implications for the future of U.S. global health programs," according to the website, which provides links to the panelists' biographies (.pdf), the foundation's Budget Tracker and a fact sheet on U.S. funding for the Global Health Initiative, among other resources (2/22). A post in the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog provides quotes from panelists Beth Tritter, managing director of the Glover Park Group; Larry Nowels, a consultant with the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign and the ONE Campaign; and Ambassador Mark Dybul, co-director of the Global Health Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law (Aziz, 2/21). The Medill School of Journalism's "Medill on the Hill" also covered the discussion (Morello, 2/21).

"While international attention focuses on Burma, [also known as Myanmar,] a health crisis in the country looms large," Joe Billiveau, operations manager of Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) operational center in Amsterdam, writes in this opinion piece in Bangkok's Nation. He continues, "An estimated 85,000 people infected with HIV in Burma are not receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment (ART). This is an improvement on previous years, with new momentum in the country to tackle the crisis," but the cancellation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Round 11 grants "threatens to undo improvements" and prevent the planned scale-up of ART for an additional 46,500 patients and treatment for another 10,000 tuberculosis (TB) patients.