Archives: Morning Breakouts

Delegates and officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Thailand representing their health and medical research councils on Tuesday in New Delhi concluded a three-day South Asian Forum for Health Research (SAHFer) hosted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Pharmabiz.com reports. "India has asked the members of [SAFHer] to explore ways for strengthening collaboration by sharing innovative methods for tackling the problems faced by the countries," Pharmabiz.com writes. According to the news service, the regional meeting discussed a wide range of subject areas, including vector-borne diseases, drug resistance, influenza, and non-communicable diseases, among other topics, an official release said (2/7).

"The key to India's success" in going a full year without recording a case of polio "was to take ownership of the problem and the solution, allowing for locals to learn from the expertise of the international community while not becoming dependent" on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international donors, William Thomson, a research assistant at the U.S. Naval War College, writes in The Diplomat's "India Decade."

In this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog, Danielle Doughman, program manager for global health research and development (R&D) advocacy at Research!America, shares the organization's findings about the state of Maryland from an analysis conducted in target states to measure the health and economic impact of global health R&D. "The robust federal investment and presence in Maryland reflects the fact that more than three-quarters of Marylanders say Americans should be concerned about global diseases like malaria, cholera, and other infectious diseases that mostly affect poorer countries," Doughman writes (2/7).

"To tackle neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), we need a far more collaborative and flexible approach," Mark Booth, acting deputy director of Durham University's Wolfson Research Institute and head of the N8 Parasitology Group, writes in this New Statesman opinion piece. Booth references the publication of new malaria mortality estimates in the Lancet and the signing of the so-called "London Declaration on NTDs" by a consortium of public and private partners last week and writes, "Malaria is not classified as an NTD because relatively large amounts of attention and funding have been pitted against the parasite. But if we now have to rethink malaria control strategies, then how confident can we be about controlling or eradicating any of the 17 NTDs identified by the World Health Organization?"

"India's plan to roll out an ambitious food security program to give cheap foodgrains to the poor and malnourished won't succeed unless the government revamps a creaky distribution network and boosts other infrastructure such as storage and transport, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said Wednesday," the Wall Street Journal reports.

NewsOne examines HIV in the Caribbean, where one percent of the population is infected with the virus, "small in comparison to numbers found in the global scheme but significant enough to distinguish it as the second-highest region with HIV/AIDS outside of sub-Saharan Africa." According to the article, HIV is spread primarily among populations at high risk for the disease, including sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who use injection drugs.

"An expanding network of eye clinics has found an innovative way of providing quality, affordable treatment to millions of blind and visually impaired poor people in India," the Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog reports. The LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), a not-for-profit organization that runs a chain of 82 eye care centers and a research institute in India, uses tiered pricing to charge wealthier patients for treatment, allowing the group to provide free treatment to poorer patients.

Two years after Haiti's January 2010 earthquake, a "crisis of gender-based violence and exploitation is festering -- and foreign aid efforts are still failing to protect survivor communities from harm, or to make the criminal justice system more accountable," The Nation reports. "In a recent study of conditions surrounding four internally displaced people's camps, researchers with the Global Justice Center and Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) estimate that '14 percent of households reported that at least one member of the household had been a victim of sexual violence since the earthquake,'" the news service writes, adding, "Victims were typically young, female, and deprived of access to food, water and sanitation."

"Mozambique's legislature is expected to pass a bill to legalize abortions in March in an effort to reduce the country's high rate of unsafe ... abortions," the Christian Science Monitor reports, noting under current law, abortion remains illegal in the country under any circumstances. The bill "would revise the country's ... abortion law and legalize voluntary abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy," making Mozambique "the ninth African country to liberalize its abortion policy in the last decade," according to the newspaper.

In this video report, Al Jazeera examines polio eradication efforts in Pakistan, writing, "[I]n an unusual effort to eliminate the disease, health workers are stopping vehicles at a busy toll booth outside Islamabad to administer free polio vaccination drops to children under the age of five." The video recounts a "promise" made by Pakistan's prime minister last month to eliminate new polio infections in the country by the end of the year and provides commentary by Shahnaz Wazir Ali, assistant to the prime minister on social affairs, and Dennis King of UNICEF Pakistan about the target, current infection rates, and ongoing eradication efforts (Tyab, 2/6).

President Barack Obama's December 1 World AIDS Day speech "could be pivotal, but only if it is followed by changes in how we tackle global AIDS," Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, writes in this Huffington Post "Global Motherhood" opinion piece. "Obama signaled a renewed U.S. commitment to funding for global AIDS programs at a time when resources at home are constrained and other countries are backing away from the fight," he writes, adding, "Now it's time to plot a course for implementing the president's vision."

In this post in IntraHealth International's "Global Health" blog, editorial manager Susanna Smith examines how health care workers operating in areas of conflict are "being used as pawns of warfare." Smith highlights the decision by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) last month to suspend services in prisons in the Libyan city of Misrata due to reports of torture and notes, "[MSF] General Director Christopher Stokes called the situation an obstruction and exploitation of the organization's work." Smith cites a Center for Strategic and International Studies report released last week "calling for 'the mere handwringing that has largely greeted attack on the health care in the past' to 'be replaced by concerted international action and a system on documentation, protection, and accountability,'" and concludes, "The international community owes at least this much to these health workers, who give so much and put themselves at risk to care for others" (2/2).

In this Scientific American opinion piece, author and former staff writer at Scientific American John Horgan examines "a bitter debate" among scientists over the publication of controversial H5N1 research, writing, "Research involving the bird-flu virus H5N1 poses an especially knotty dilemma, in which scientists' commitment to openness -- and to reducing humanity's vulnerability to potential health threats -- collides with broader security concerns." Horgan provides some statistics on H5N1 infection, recounts a brief history of the research in question and suggests four options to resolve the dilemma.

As the international community on Monday marked the ninth annual International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), the U.N. and international and human rights organizations called for an end to FGM/C and are appealing for tougher legislation to halt the practice that has affected up to 140 million girls and women worldwide, according to WHO statistics, VOA News reports (Schlein, 2/6). "The United States stands in consensus with women, governments, and donors around the world in a commitment to provide the energy and resources necessary to end this harmful traditional practice that violates girls' right to bodily integrity, harms their health, and reduces their status in society," USAID writes on its website (2/6).

USAID on Monday said it has "delivered the first two of 17 planned laboratory devices" to help quickly diagnose drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB), VOA's "Breaking News" blog reports. "It says the machines allow for technicians to diagnose multi-drug resistant tuberculosis within as little as two hours, instead of the previous time requirement of several months," the blog writes. The "new lab devices, along with 12,000 testing cartridges, will be given to tuberculosis hospitals and clinics in more than 10 Vietnamese provinces," according to the news service (2/6).

The U.N. Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific (ESCAP) on Monday in Bangkok "opened a three-day meeting lauding impressive gains in recent years in the fight against HIV/AIDS," but the body cautioned "there are still legal and social barriers that significantly set back eradication efforts," VOA News reports. U.N. ESCAP Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer "note[d] the gains are uneven and there are still gaps in the goal of universal access to HIV treatment," the news service writes.

Matt Fisher, a research assistant at the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Global Health Policy Center, summarizes the ongoing debate in Congress over needle and syringe exchange programs (NSEPs) in this post on the SmartGlobalHealth.org blog. He presents a history of NSEPs and notes, "President Obama recently signed the FY12 omnibus spending bill that, among other things, reinstated the ban on the use of federal funds for needle and syringe exchange programs (NSEPs); this step reversed the 111th Congress' 2009 decision to allow federal funds to be used for these programs." He concludes that despite scientific evidence that NSEPs are an effective public health intervention, "ideological and moral opposition remains," and therefore, "the issue of federal funding will continue to be actively debated" (2/6).