Archives: Morning Breakouts

In other news related to the Supreme Court's consideration of legal challenges to the health law, the parties involved differ not only on questions related to the overhaul, but also on the allocation of time for different aspects of the overhaul.

The WHO has disputed a study published last week in the Lancet "that claims nearly twice as many people are dying of malaria than current estimates," VOA News reports. The WHO "says both its estimates of malaria deaths and those of the Lancet study are statistically the same for all groups in all regions," with one exception, VOA writes, noting, "WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says there's a notable statistical difference in regard to children over five and adults in Africa."

In this post in TIME World's "Global Spin" blog, TIME's Africa bureau chief Alex Perry examines questions surrounding an Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) study published in the Lancet on Friday that suggests "malaria kills almost twice as many people a year as previously believed," writing, "If correct, at a stroke that overturns medical consensus, makes a nonsense of decades of World Health Organization (WHO) statistics -- the official malaria numbers -- and plunges the current multibillion-dollars anti-malaria campaign, and the push to reach a 2015 deadline for achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals, into grave doubt."

"The rise of emerging economies in Latin America is an opportunity to improve strategies for fighting neglected illnesses and increase the region's contribution to the global struggle against them, says" Eric Stobbaerts, the Latin America director of the independent Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Inter Press Service reports. "Our region is going through a major transformation in economic and social terms," Stobbaerts told IPS after a meeting on "Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases" (NTDs) held in London on January 30, "mentioning the progress that has been made in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Mexico," IPS writes.

Noting "there is a huge 'cancer divide' between rich and poor," with more than half of new cancer cases and almost two-thirds of all cancer deaths occurring in developing countries, this year's World Cancer Day theme, "Together It Is Possible," "calls on all individuals, organizations and governments to do their part to reduce premature deaths from cancers by 25 percent by 2025," Felicia Knaul, secretariat for the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries, and Jonathan Quick, president of Management Sciences for Health, write in a Huffington Post opinion piece. "But there have been four myths that have held back cancer care and control in developing countries," they write.

Following an outbreak of the mosquito-borne yellow fever virus in Cameroon that has infected at least 23 people and killed at least seven people, U.N. and local officials are working to vaccinate "1.2 million people considered at high risk of contracting yellow fever, which has no cure," the U.N. News Centre reports. "The U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the International Coordinating Group on Yellow Fever Provision (YF-ICG) -- which includes WHO and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) -- and the public-private partnership known as the GAVI Alliance are funding the vaccination campaign," the news service writes. In Ghana, YF-ICG is working with the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) to plan a vaccination campaign after at least three cases of yellow fever have been reported in the north of the country, the U.N. News Centre notes (2/3).

In this Guardian analysis, journalist and author Rose George describes a recent trip to Liberia with the organization WaterAid, during which she discussed sanitation with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and visited two towns with the aim of learning more about their access to clean water and sanitation. George describes the country's history, how some non-governmental organizations are working to improve sanitation in the country, and the challenges to doing so. She quotes Sirleaf as saying, "People say they want health clinics, ... but they don't ask for sanitation. They say their children get malaria or dysentery, but they don't ask for sanitation. We have to bring to their consciousness that sanitation is linked to health" (2/3).

Here is today's health policy haiku.