Archives: Morning Breakouts

"After a period of substantial decline, the global abortion rate has stalled, according to new research from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (WHO)" published in the Lancet on Wednesday, a Guttmacher press release reports. "Between 1995 and 2003, the overall number of abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-44 years) dropped from 35 to 29" but, "according to the new study, the global abortion rate in 2008 was virtually unchanged, at 28 per 1,000," the press release states. "This plateau coincides with a slowdown, documented by the United Nations, in contraceptive uptake, which has been especially marked in developing countries," according to the press release. "The researchers also found that nearly half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe, ... almost all unsafe abortions occur in the developing world," and "restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower rates of abortion," the press release adds (1/18).

The Los Angeles Times' "Booster Shots" blog features an interview with Otto Yang, a professor at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who speaks about drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and the implications of a highly drug-resistant strain found in India. Yang said, "Obviously [the drug-resistant TB] could be devastating if it spreads, because treatment options are so limited. So far it seems not to have been as contagious as other strains, possibly because the mutations required to make it drug-resistant also make it a little less virulent" (Brown, 1/18).

"Cote d'Ivoire remains in great need of humanitarian assistance nine months after the end of the bloody post-election violence that displaced tens of thousands of people, a senior United Nations relief official said today, urging donors to continue their generosity to the West African country throughout this year," the U.N. News Centre reports. "Considerable needs remain in several areas such as protection of civilians, restoration of means of livelihood, shelter, access to basic services and voluntary return and reintegration of displaced persons and refugees," Catherine Bragg, assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said following a three-day visit to the nation, according to the news service (1/18).

"Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has shut down two major medical centers in the Somali capital Mogadishu after two of its aid workers were shot dead by a former colleague last month, the international medical aid agency said on Thursday," AlertNet reports. The closure of the two 120-bed centers, the largest of MSF's 13 projects in Somalia, cuts in half the organization's presence in the capital, the news service notes, adding that the centers have treated thousands of malnourished children and provided vaccinations or treatments to tens of thousands more patients since August 2011 (Migiro, 1/19).

Al Jazeera examines the consequences of Somalia's ongoing famine, "the worst hunger crisis seen here for two decades." Many Somalis fled their rural homes to Mogadishu to escape drought and conflict, but "the city has become the epicenter of the world's worst humanitarian crisis," the news service reports, adding, "While new arrivals say that conditions in the capital are better than elsewhere in the country, they are atrocious by any other measure." In the city, "[m]alnutrition rates are more than double the emergency threshold," and many refugees face homelessness as camps become more crowded, Al Jazeera reports (Wander 1/19).

Psychological, organizational and budgetary factors contributed to why governments did not respond sooner to early famine warnings in the Horn of Africa, Hugo Slim, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the University of Oxford, says in this Guardian opinion piece. In a new report (.pdf), Save the Children and Oxfam "suggest that government officials were reluctant to call a crisis until there was a crisis"; that organizing "NGOs and U.N. agencies to agree the scale of a problem and then to act in concert is always going to be difficult"; and that, "[m]ore importantly, budgets are still divided too strictly between emergency and development funds," he writes.

"Scientists and aid organizations gave the world plenty of time to prepare, but a late response by the world's donor nations cost 50,000 to 100,000 lives during last year's drought in the Horn of Africa region," the Christian Science Monitor's "Global News Blog" writes about a report (.pdf) released on Wednesday by Save the Children and Oxfam (Baldauf, 1/18). "The two agencies blame 'a culture of risk aversion' among donors and NGOs, which meant the specially-built early warning system, FEWSNET, worked but was ignored until it was too late," GlobalPost's "Africa Emerges" blog writes (McConnell, 1/18). "A food shortage had been predicted as early as August 2010, but most donors did not respond until famine was declared in parts of Somalia last July," the Associated Press/New York Times notes (1/18).

GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog interviews Ellyn Ogden, USAID's worldwide polio eradication coordinator since 1997, about India's progress in eradicating polio as it marked one year without a confirmed case and discusses what the overall eradication fight looks like today. Ogden said she believes global eradication of polio is possible, adding, "We pretty much owe it to India to give this effort some time. They worked so hard to get 172 million kids vaccinated. There are always skeptics. But it doesn't get much more difficult than in India. If they can do it here, we should be able to do it anyplace with the tools and strategies we have" (Donnelly, 1/17).

The Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog asks whether Sierra Leone was right to ban traditional birth attendants (TBAs) from assisting deliveries 18 months ago, writing, "Although [TBAs] are often poorly trained and sometimes use unsafe delivery procedures, for most women in rural Sierra Leone they are a lifeline." The blog writes that "some experts believe women are putting themselves at serious risk by relying on TBAs, who cannot handle obstetric complications such as hemorrhage, eclampsia and obstructed labor, conditions that account for three-quarters of maternal deaths," but, "[i]n areas where dense jungle and impassable roads make travel nigh-on impossible, the TBAs may also be the only available helping hand."

Community health workers (CHWs) "are seen to be a key part of a functioning primary health system," especially in African nations, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writes in a post on Huffington Post's "Impact" blog. "This system should include a clinic within short walking distance, with supplies, a skilled birth attendant and other staff, electricity, and safe water; an ambulance for emergency transport; an emergency '911' number; a policy of free care at the point of service (so as not to turn away the indigent); and trained and remunerated CHWs, taught also to treat diseases and save lives in the community," he says.

This post in the Ministerial Leadership Initiative's (MLI) "Leading Global Health" blog is "the first of a series of perspective pieces on country ownership from the 'Advancing Country Ownership for Greater Results' roundtable organized last week by" MLI. "The first of four pieces covers the comments of USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah," the blog writes, noting, "Shah opened MLI's meeting by saying that the U.S. government was committed to country ownership, but that it needed to find ways to improve its support of country-led plans" (Donnelly, 1/17).

"After more than a century as a global scourge and hundreds of thousands lives lost, polio may now be on the verge of being the second human disease wiped off the face of the Earth," Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, writes in his column for ForeignPolicy.com, "The Optimist," and asks whether it is worth it to spend billions of dollars to wipe out the few remaining cases of the disease. Kenny discusses the cost-effectiveness of eradication efforts and writes, "In part because of the considerably greater complexity of the vaccination program, the cost of the polio eradication program is mounting."