Archives: Morning Breakouts

"We welcome the Obama administration's announcement of a farsighted effort to treat millions more [people living with HIV] abroad, especially in sub-Saharan Africa," a New York Times editorial writes. "The administration expects that the expanded treatments can be paid for with existing resources, by pushing for greater efficiencies and more financing from recipient nations. But if that effort stalls, the administration should re-evaluate quickly whether to ask Congress for money," the editorial states.

"Journalists have a responsibility to cover important world issues and stories, urged Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of USAID, while speaking at an event at Harvard University on Thursday evening," GlobalPost reports. "He was welling with emotion as he told this story" of a Somali mother fleeing to Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp "to a gathering of journalists and experts on global health at a forum sponsored by GlobalPost, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism," the news service writes.

In this post in Huffington Post's "Impact" blog, Orin Levine of the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) recounts recent progress in expanding vaccine access to the world's poor, writing, "From rolling out the first diarrhea vaccines in Africa, to doubling the number of low-income countries approved for vaccines against pneumonia, to announcing they will now assist countries [to] introduce vaccines for that prevent cervical cancer, the GAVI Alliance and its partners are tearing down the barriers to vaccine access that have historically divided rich from poor on our planet. To appreciate how far we've come you need to remember where we started."

"The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said that Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, who are in the 'meningitis belt' stretching across Africa, will this month introduce a new vaccine designed to eliminate a particular strain of the often deadly disease," Afrique en ligne reports (12/10). "Alison Brunier, a spokesperson for WHO, told journalists in Geneva that the three countries plan to vaccinate about 22 million people [among] them, focusing on the highest-risk demographic category -- those aged between one and 29 years" and that "the immunization campaign should be completed within a couple of weeks," the U.N. News Centre writes (12/9).

"An Afghan woman can expect to have an average 5.1 babies in her lifetime, the highest fertility rate in Asia," Reuters writes in the first of two articles examining childbirth and maternal mortality in Afghanistan. The news service adds that "giving birth a common, and frequent experience -- but mothers say it is too often also hard, lonely and frightening." The article recounts the experiences of several mothers giving birth in hospitals throughout the country (Kearney/Harvey, 12/12).

"Malawi is to review laws banning homosexuality in response to public opinion, according to reports," the Guardian writes. "The move comes just days after the U.S. announced it would" promote and protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people through foreign aid and diplomacy, the newspaper notes, adding that the U.S. provides "Malawi about $200 million (

After experiencing a decline in the number of new HIV infections in the 1990s, Uganda's "HIV [incidence] rate is creeping back up again. New infections are increasing, and the sense of urgency has vanished," the Globe and Mail reports, adding that the country "has become an early warning signal to the rest of the world: If the fight against AIDS fades into complacency and neglect, the disease can roar back again." The article discusses how complacency among the general population, as well as government policies of Uganda and the U.S., "have contributed to the rise in HIV infections here, analysts say" (York, 12/9).

"The United Nations said on Friday it was seeking $268 million for aid efforts in Zimbabwe next year, with half the money to be used to buy food for more than 1.4 million people facing shortages" in 2012, Reuters reports. "The humanitarian situation in the country has continued to improve over the past couple of years. However, challenges still exist such as food insecurity" and lack of access to safe water, which has led to cholera and typhoid outbreaks, Alain Noudehou, country head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said, the news service notes (12/9).