Archives: Morning Breakouts

The chairman of the Senate HELP Committee wants the HHS inspector general to investigate whether a $1 million federal grant was misused.

"Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are looking into a $433 million contract awarded by the Health and Human Services Department to purchase a yet-to-be-approved smallpox drug" known as ST-426, CQ HealthBeat reports. "The lawmakers raised questions about several issues, including the cost of the contract"; "asked for evidence supporting the assumption that the [FDA] will approve the ST-426, which was one of the requirements of the contract"; and "requested documents describing the actual threat of smallpox, the cost of the contract, and the decision to award it" by January 11, the news service notes (Ethridge, 12/21).

IRIN reports how "[a]n exchange between two leading world officials on how trade affects food insecurity in countries has helped focus attention on the stalled Doha trade talks." A debate between Olivier de Schutter, the U.N. Human Rights Council special rapporteur on the right to food, and Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), "has reopened issues around the Doha talks which have been going on, in stop-start mode, for the last 10 years," IRIN writes.

Across Africa, "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer brutal attacks, yet cannot report them to the police for fear of additional violence, humiliation, rape or imprisonment at the hands of the authorities. We are expelled from school and denied health care because of our perceived sexual orientation or gender identity," Frank Mugisha, 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureate and executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, writes in a New York Times opinion piece. He adds, "When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this month that the United States would use diplomacy to encourage respect for gay rights around the world, my heart leapt."

In this analysis, "IRIN discussed with aid agencies and Sahel food security analysts the subtleties of getting early warning messages right in such situations." According to the news service, "Food security in the Sahel this year is part of a 'persistent and predictable reservoir of chronic acute food insecurity,' [experts] say, 'in a predictable portion of the region's population,' and requires long-term structural aid not short-term fixes." In addition, "much of the malnutrition in the region is caused by other factors: poor water quality, low-quality health care, poor sanitation and poor feeding practices," IRIN writes. The article includes quotes from numerous food security experts (12/23).

In this video clip from NBC's Today show, contributing correspondent Jenna Bush Hager reports on a recent family trip to Africa to visit PEPFAR-funded programs and to announce a new initiative by the George W. Bush Institute to fight cervical cancer. In the video, the Bushes travel to Tanzania, where they visit a PEPFAR-funded program called Jipende!, which trains hairstylists as health educators in 70 salons throughout the country, and to Zambia, where they visit the Ocean Road Cancer Institute and discuss a new initiative for cervical cancer testing, treatment and vaccination (12/22).

President Obama on Thursday announced "an additional $113 million in emergency relief assistance for the Horn of Africa ... [to] support urgently needed food, health, shelter, water and assistance needs," according to a White House statement. The additional aid adds to the approximately $870 million already provided to assist the region with emergency relief, according to the statement, which noted the administration is making long-term investments in food security through the Feed the Future initiative.

"The journal Science has chosen the HPTN 052 clinical trial, an international HIV prevention trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)," which found that early treatment with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) reduced the risk of transmission among sero-discordant partners by 96 percent, as the "2011 Breakthrough of the Year," an NIH press release states (12/22). "Given resource constraints and logistical hurdles, treatment as prevention isn't going to sweep the world anytime soon," Science writes, adding, "But HPTN 052 has made imaginations race about the what-ifs like never before, spotlighting the scientifically probable rather than the possible" (Cohen, 12/23).