Archives: Morning Breakouts

During a webinar Thursday hosted by the Health Global Access Project, AVAC, and amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research), John Blandford, chief of CDC's Division of Global HIV/AIDS Health Economics, Systems and Integration Branch, presented findings showing "that scaling up antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in the developing world not only saves lives, but saves money too," the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog reports. According to the blog, "[Blandford] and his team of colleagues have found that cost savings from averted negative outcomes offset a major portion of the cost of treatment over time." The blog quotes Blandford saying, "Based on [WHO] standards, ART should be considered highly cost-effective in almost every country in sub-Saharan Africa" (Mazzotta, 1/27).

"Doctors in Zimbabwe said more than 800 cases of typhoid have been reported in Harare, the capital, in an outbreak of the bacterial disease," GlobalPost reports (Conway-Smith, 1/29). "Health services director Dr. Prosper Chonzi raised fears of a cholera outbreak given the health conditions that gave birth to typhoid," Xinhua writes (1/28). Chonzi "said ... a clean-up and awareness campaign is underway," according to GlobalPost (1/29).

In this post on the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog, "Ashley Bennett, senior policy associate at the GHTC, offered her take on President Obama's State of the Union address, including his emphasis on research and innovation." She writes, "While the President was not as focused on using science to help the United States out-innovate the rest of the world as he was during last year's State of the Union address, he did re-commit his administration to harnessing the strength of innovation to create an 'America built to last,'" adding, "He also urged Congress not to cut parts of the budget that will hurt the promise of science and technology" (Bennett, 1/27).

UNICEF on Friday "appealed ... for $1.28 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to children in over 25 countries this year, with nearly one-third of the total amount earmarked for the crisis in the Horn of Africa," the U.N. News Centre reports (1/27). The agency also released its annual "Humanitarian Action for Children 2012" report, which "decried the rising levels of starvation and malnutrition among children under the age of five in many of the world's troubled regions," GlobalPost writes (1/27). UNICEF "said it was seeking nine percent less than in 2011, linked to lower needs in Pakistan and Haiti, but that its needs for fighting hunger had jumped by nearly 50 percent," according to Agence France-Presse (1/28). The agency said more than one million children in Africa's Sahel region are at risk of severe malnutrition, Reuters reports (1/27).

The Malaria Policy Advisory Committee, convened by the WHO Global Malaria Programme and composed of 15 malaria experts, will hold its first meeting January 31 through February 2 in Geneva, according to this article in Malaria Journal, which is a prelude to a series on the group's policy recommendations and supporting evidence that will be published following each biannual meeting. The article also "provides the global malaria community with the background and overview of the Committee and its terms of reference," the article summary states (D'Souza/Newman, 1/27).

In this AlertNet commentary, GAVI Alliance CEO Seth Berkley discusses how "public-private partnership is part of the GAVI Alliance's formula for success that has helped countries to immunize 325 million children in our first 10 years, saving more than 5.5 million lives." Writing last week from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Berkley says, "In fact, public-private partnerships are part of what brings me to Davos this week."

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and the new chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece about Africa's efforts in the fight against malaria. "Supported by the lessons learned from the decade to 'roll back malaria,' which produced a 33 percent decline in malaria deaths in Africa between 2000 and 2010, 41 African presidents have now signed on to end deaths from the disease in their home countries as part of [ALMA]," she writes. But "[d]espite this encouraging progress, much work remains to be done," she continues.

Thirteen pharmaceutical companies; the governments of the U.S., U.K. and United Arab Emirates; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the WHO; the World Bank; the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi); and other global health organizations "announced a new, coordinated push to accelerate progress toward eliminating or controlling 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by the end of the decade," according to a press release (.pdf) from Global Health Strategies. "In the largest coordinated effort to date to combat NTDs," the partners will provide 14 billion doses of medications by the end of the decade and share expertise and products to speed research and development of new drugs, the press release notes.

In an article examining recent developments at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Wall Street Journal interviews Gabriel Jaramillo, the Colombian-born Brazilian citizen and former CEO of Sovereign Bank who will become the fund's new general manager this week. Following "disclosures of misused funds and a slowdown in global donations," the "new chief ... plans a major overhaul of operations following an assessment urging improved management," according to the newspaper.

The NIH is expected on February 1 to release a statement explaining how the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) reached a decision in November to recommend "that two scientific papers describing research that created strains of bird flu potentially transmissible in humans should be published only if key details are omitted," for fear "that terrorists or hostile nations could learn how to cause a pandemic," a New York Times editorial by Philip Boffey, Times science editorial writer, states.

Speaking on Saturday at the African Union Summit, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said huge advances in HIV treatment and prevention have been made over the past decade in Africa, "[b]ut these gains 'are not sustainable,' ... because they are heavily dependent on foreign aid," the Zimbabwean reports (1/30). "An estimated two-thirds of AIDS expenditures in Africa come from international funding sources, according to a new UNAIDS issues brief titled "AIDS dependency crisis: sourcing African solutions" (.pdf), Xinhua writes (1/29).

Here is the first round of reader-contributed health policy haikus.