Archives: Morning Breakouts

Street News Service/Inter Press Service examines how Senegal is addressing HIV/AIDS among prisoners in a Dakar maximum-security facility. "Prisons are high-risk environments for the transmission of the disease, due to the prevalence of hard drugs, violence and sexual relations," the news service writes and discusses how addressing such issues can present challenges in the majority-Muslim country. "There is no mandatory testing in prison, and for those prisoners who, either knowingly or unknowingly, are living with HIV, the stresses of living in prison -- including overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and poor nutrition -- mean their health is even more compromised."

USA Today reports that some workplaces are refusing to hire people who test positive for nicotine use.

"About 200 million people around the world use illegal drugs every year, and that may be taking a toll on health and death rates in various countries, says a report released Thursday in the Lancet," the Los Angeles Times' "Booster Shots" blog reports. According to the blog, "[t]he study, part of a series the journal is doing on addiction, offers a plethora of information about [the] use of opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and marijuana worldwide" (Stein, 1/5).

The WHO on Thursday "announced the deaths of two men from H5N1 avian influenza, one from Egypt and another from China whose death was reported earlier in the media," CIDRAP News reports. Both men are suspected to have contracted the virus from avian sources, although an investigation into the man from China's exposure to the virus is ongoing, according to news service. "The two infections and deaths push the WHO global H5N1 count to 576 cases and 339 deaths. According to WHO records, the number of H5N1 cases and deaths reported in 2011 so far are modestly higher than 2010 (60 cases versus 48, and 33 deaths versus 24)," CIDRAP writes (Schnirring, 1/5).

Jose Graziano da Silva, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece, "My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push towards [achieving the first millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people living in hunger and extreme poverty by 2015], but also to look beyond it, to the final, total eradication of hunger from this planet. Obviously, it is not something that FAO can do alone. It needs a new international mobilization, the support of decision-makers everywhere, and a concerted effort by the entire U.N. family and other development partners."

Author Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this Foreign Policy opinion piece that the announcement that researchers from Norway and the U.S. have developed a supercontagious variety of bird flu "has highlighted a dilemma: How do you balance the universal mandate for scientific openness against the fear that terrorists or rogue states might follow the researchers' work -- using it as catastrophic cookbooks for global influenza contagion?" She continues, "Along with several older studies that are now garnering fresh attention, [the research] has revealed that the political world is completely unprepared for the synthetic-biology revolution" and notes "there are no consistent, internationally agreed-upon regulations governing synthetic biology, the extraordinarily popular and fruitful 21st-century field of genetic manipulation of microorganisms."

CBC News examines the roles of Canadian humanitarian organizations and the government in helping Haiti rebuild nearly two years after a massive earthquake rocked the country. "Haiti needs long-term solutions, says Nicolas Moyer, a spokesman for the Humanitarian Coalition," which includes Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec, CARE Canada, Plan Canada and Save the Children, the news service notes.

The National Federation of Independent Business asked the Supreme Court to add two additional plaintiffs to its health law challenge after the initial plaintiff in the case filed for bankruptcy.

The U.N. "has received alarming reports of malnutrition in two Sudanese border states where the army is fighting insurgents," according to Valerie Amos, U.N. under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Reuters reports. Since fighting broke out in June in the South Kordofan and Blue Nile states near the border of the newly independent South Sudan, "U.N. agencies and aid groups have only been able to keep small teams of local staff on the ground and the government has stopped any aid workers visiting areas where there has been fighting," the news service writes. Amos "urged Sudan to lift a ban on international U.N. staff traveling to both border states" so the agency could ensure it has staff with the correct skills on the ground, according to Reuters (Laessing, 1/4).

News outlets report on how GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is being targeted by Republican rivals and the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann exits the primary race, and Rick Santorum, fresh from his Iowa caucus finish, draws headlines.

"New HIV cases and AIDS deaths are both going steadily down in British Columbia, according to data released last week," the New York Times reports. Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said, "We're particularly pleased to see that our treatment-as-prevention strategy has taken off big-time," the newspaper notes, adding that the strategy, which aggressively identifies and treats people with HIV, "lowers by 96 percent the chances that they will infect others." The New York Times writes, "Montaner said he is frustrated that rich countries will not donate enough money to roll out the strategy in poor countries with huge HIV epidemics" (McNeil, 1/2).