Archives: Morning Breakouts

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, pledged $750 million on behalf of the foundation to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Associated Press reports. Gates said the donation, which comes on top of $650 million contributed by the foundation to the fund over the last decade, "is meant to encourage other potential donors," the AP notes (Heilprin/Jordans, 1/26). According to the Financial Times, the Global Fund "will receive the money within five years, but with the option to draw on the total amount immediately to cover temporary shortfalls in cash from its other donors, most of whom are industrialized nations' official development agencies" (Jack, 1/26).

"The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades," the WHO writes in an updated fact sheet about dengue and severe dengue published on the organization's website. According to the fact sheet, "Over 2.5 billion people -- over 40 percent of the world's population -- are now at risk from dengue," and "WHO currently estimates there may be 50-100 million dengue infections worldwide every year" (January 2012).

This post in the Center for Strategic and International Studies' "Smart Global Health" blog examines drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), stating, "[S]ince the recent outbreak of the so-called totally drug-resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB) in India, TB has a new face." The blog details what TDR-TB is, recaps how resistant strains of TB develop and suggests several ways in which the global health community should respond (Kramer, 1/25).

This post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog is the first of a series in which Research!America, a member of the GHTC, will profile various U.S. states based on an analyses the organization conducted "to measure the economic impact of [research & development (R&D)], highlighting the benefits of it for states across the nation," and to examine "what the [U.S.] is doing to advance global health R&D and why our continued support of such work is crucial for the health and prosperity of our future." In the post, Danielle Doughman, program manager for global health R&D advocacy at Research!America, shares the organization's findings in the state of California, writing, "California's world class universities, businesses, and non-profits create a robust global health sector with significant impacts on job creation, tax revenue and health" (1/25).

"This week marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- the world's most powerful tool for improving health -- at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland," Natasha Bilimoria, president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, writes in this post in the AlertNet "Insight" blog. During an announcement at the WEF on Wednesday that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate an additional $750 million to the Global Fund, Bill Gates said, "By supporting the Global Fund, we can help to change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world," Bilimoria says, writing, "He's right. ... In total, the Global Fund is responsible for saving the lives of roughly 4,400 people every day."

"Are we watching the rebirth of the troubled Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, perhaps in a new, more U.S.-flavored guise?" Guardian health editor Sarah Boseley asks in her "Global Health Blog." She writes, "The Fund has been in the mire now for some time after revelations that some of its grants fell into corrupt hands, short of money and unable to agree new grants to developing countries badly in need of disease-fighting programs," adding, "But the dramatic events of the past few days suggest the Global Fund's fortunes might be on the turn as it hits its tenth anniversary."

In this post on the Council on Foreign Relation's "The Internationalist" blog, Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, addresses what he calls myths about foreign aid amid this year's primary season, writing, "GOP presidential candidates regularly bash it, echoing 'Mr. Republican' Robert Taft -- who dismissed overseas assistance more than six decades ago as 'pouring money down a rat hole.'" Patrick cites a number of polls measuring U.S. citizens' attitudes toward foreign aid spending, writing, "[P]ublic opposition to providing foreign aid is one of the hoariest misconceptions in U.S. foreign policy. In fact, U.S. citizens support foreign aid, particularly when it is targeted to alleviating poverty and humanitarian suffering." He quotes a number of GOP presidential candidates with relation to foreign aid spending and notes, "Indeed, among the remaining GOP candidates, only former Senator Rick Santorum has rejected 'zeroing out' foreign aid, describing it as a form of 'pandering'" (1/25).

"The global economic downturn and the euro-zone crisis may stand in the way of efforts to reduce poverty and disease around the world," Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said on Wednesday in a talk at the London School of Economics sponsored by the Global Poverty Project, Bloomberg reports. Gates noted that "'incredible progress' had been made toward reducing poverty and disease," and said, "There are many things going on in terms of the euro-zone crisis, budget cutbacks, that would make it easy to turn inward and actually reduce the financing that has led to so much progress," according to the news service.

"Eighty-six percent of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] have no access to antiretrovirals, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday," calling the "conditions of access to care for people living with HIV/AIDS ... catastrophic," Agence France-Presse reports (1/25). Approximately 15,000 people living with HIV in the DRC "likely will die waiting for lifesaving drugs in the next three years," the organization, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said, the Associated Press reports. A statement from the organization "called for Congo's government to meet its commitment to provide free treatment to people living with HIV and AIDS, and for donors to immediately mobilize resources 'to ensure that patients waiting for ARV treatment are not condemned to die,'" according to the AP. Of an estimated 350,000 people in need of antiretroviral treatment, only 44,000 are receiving therapy, the AP notes (Mwanamilongo, 1/25).

This Financial Times analysis examines food security, writing, "Climate change, ill-judged policies, protectionism, urbanization and plain greed have all conspired to reignite Malthusian prophesies of a growing world population unable to feed itself." The article states, "The prospect of more starving people as staples become unaffordable has put the question of food security firmly on to the top table of global policymaking," and discusses the economics of food; production, access, and waste; and genetic modification of crops (Lucas/Fontanella-Khan, 1/25).

Research into transmissible bird flu strains remains "urgent" despite flu investigators' recent declaration of a "60-day moratorium on avian flu transmission because of the current controversy," Yoshihiro Kawaoka of Tokyo University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "a lead researcher on one of two recent studies showing how H5N1 can be transmitted through airborne droplets" among ferrets, writes in a commentary published Wednesday in the journal Nature, Reuters reports. In December, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity "asked two leading journals, Nature and Science, to withhold details of both studies for fear it could be used by bioterrorists," the news agency notes.

News reports analyze why President Barack Obama gave only scant reference to the health law in his State of the Union address, how his push for regulatory reform may play out in the health care sector and how the speech represents his return to familiar themes.