Latest KFF Health News Stories
Berwick Advances The Quality Cause
The Los Angeles Times reports that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Donald Berwick is pressing for health care quality improvements and innovations.
Pharmaceutical Companies Should ‘Get On Board’ With Unitaid’s ‘Patent Pools’
In this Guardian opinion piece, Jill Filipovic, a freelance writer and blogger at Feministe, reports on how Unitaid, an organization “largely funded through innovating financing methods, including a tax on airplane tickets,” is working to increase access to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatments in developing countries through “patent pools” and urges pharmaceutical companies to “get on board.”
U.S. Investment In Global Health Strengthens Communities, Economies
“It’s time to respond … [to Americans who] have not been given a comprehensive explanation of how U.S. investments in foreign aid — particularly global health — are used or how they benefit Americans here at home,” Karl Hofmann, president and CEO of PSI, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece. “Global health investments benefit the globe. … Healthy families yield healthy societies and economies. Everyone everywhere benefits,” he states.
Small U.S. Investments In Global Health Help Strengthen Economies
In this Huffington Post opinion piece, singer and actor Mandy Moore writes that during her travels as a PSI ambassador, “sometimes the disconnect I see is truly striking: people can get cold Coca Cola, but far too infrequently malaria drugs; most own mobile phones, but don’t have equal access to pre-natal care.” Noting that technology has helped the U.S. and Europe improve health standards and therefore strengthen their economies, she writes, “It’s simple and logical, but to grow economies, the basic building block of health is necessary.”
Global Fund Is Smart Investment In Fighting Disease
“For the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] is an invaluable partner, and the progress they have achieved is bringing us closer than ever to the reality of global health equity,” Joe Cerrell, director of the Gates Foundation’s European office, writes in an AlertNet opinion piece, adding, “Every day, programs supported by the Global Fund save at least 4,400 lives.”
Global Corporations Create Shared Value Through Social Responsibility Programs
In this post in the Guardian’s “Sustainable Business Blog,” Mark Kramer, founder and managing director of the non-profit consulting firm FSG and senior fellow at the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, examines how “[g]lobal corporations are increasingly finding ways to create shared value — pursuing business initiatives that improve social and environmental conditions while earning the company a profit and conferring a competitive advantage.”
Health Clinic In Indonesia Promotes Conservation Through Medical Care
VOA News profiles a medical clinic in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, called Alam Sehat Lestari, or ASRI, and established by American Kinari Webb, that aims to promote health and wellness through quality medical care and conservation. In addition to allowing patients to pay for health care “through non-monetary means, such as woven baskets, seedlings or labor exchanges,” clinic workers educate patients about conservation as they wait to register, and each month they visit surrounding communities to determine whether they are illegally logging from a nearby national park, the news service notes. “Communities that do not participate in illegal logging pay about 40 percent less than those that do,” according to VOA News (Schonhardt, 10/4).
Britain To Cut Bilateral Aid For Global HIV/AIDS Projects By Nearly One-Third By 2015
Britain is cutting bilateral aid for HIV/AIDS projects in developing countries by 32 percent, from 59.9 million pounds to 41 million pounds, between now and 2015, according to data from the Department for International Development (DfID), the Guardian reports. “The drop in support comes despite a 92 percent rise in Britain’s bilateral aid for global health, from 376 million pounds to 723 million pounds by 2015, when reproductive, maternal and newborn health will absorb 64 percent of DfID’s global health funding,” the newspaper writes.
CBS News Reports On Afghanistan’s Efforts To Improve Maternal Health
CBS News reports on Afghanistan’s efforts to improve maternal health, writing, “In larger cities, maternity care is improving. But modern health care is a world away for most Afghans. For a pregnant woman, traveling the rough terrain to a clinic is nearly impossible. Only one in four births take place under professional care, so even the smallest medical issue can be fatal.” The news service adds, “One bit of hope: USAID helps sponsor midwife classes to fill the gaping hole in the number of trained medical professionals, a result of the Taliban’s prohibition on educating women. More than 2,500 midwives have graduated, and the infant mortality rate has since declined 22 percent” (Clark, 10/4).
First Edition: October 5, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about Congress’ continuing struggle with budget and spending issues.
High Court Hears Medicaid Case, Weighs Right To Object To Cuts
The Supreme Court kicked off its new term Monday by hearing arguments in a key Medicaid case that tests whether providers and patients can go to court to challenge decisions by cash-strapped states to reduce Medicaid payments.
Health Law Decision Will Have Lasting Impact On Supreme Court
Politico Pro examines concern about the impact an election-year health law decision could have on the institution of the court how it could could steer the justices away from this timeline.
New York Times Reports On Proposed Cuts To Foreign Aid
As Congress looks to reduce the U.S. national debt, “both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have proposed slashing financing for the State Department and its related aid agencies at a time of desperate humanitarian crises and uncertain political developments,” the New York Times reports. The proposed cuts to President Barack Obama’s FY12 spending request would be “the first significant cuts in overseas aid in nearly two decades, a retrenchment that officials and advocates say reflects the country’s diminishing ability to influence the world,” according to the newspaper. The reductions would affect global health programs and humanitarian assistance for disaster-hit areas, among other programs, the newspaper notes.
Uganda’s Free Health Care System ‘In Crisis,’ Daily Monitor Reports
Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports on the status of the country’s free health care system, which it writes “is in crisis despite the billions of shillings of mostly donor money flowing in every year.” According to the newspaper, “Visits to a dozen health centers across the country revealed a chronic shortage of beds, drugs and medical personnel, confirming a recent verdict by the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda that ‘service delivery and general care is almost not there.'”
Vodacom Tanzania, Local NGO Use Mobile Phone Banking To Help Women With Obstetric Fistula
The Guardian examines a text messaging program in Tanzania initiated by Vodacom Tanzania and local NGO Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) that utilizes Africa’s mobile phone banking system, M-Pesa, to provide women suffering from obstetric fistula, caused by difficult childbirth, with the funds necessary to travel to health facilities for treatment. “CCRBT and Vodacom have now appointed a team of 60 ‘ambassadors’ to travel around the country diagnosing women with the condition. Within an hour of an ambassador finding a patient a date is set for surgery and money for transport is texted to the ambassador, who takes the patient to the bus stop,” according to the Guardian.
Local Community Health Workers Aim To Improve Maternal And Infant Health In Rural Timor-Leste
In this post in USAID’s “IMPACTblog,” Rick Scott, mission director of USAID in Timor-Leste, reports on a health-focused field trip to the “sub-village” of Hatugeo in Timor-Leste’s central highlands where USAID-trained community health workers are working to improve maternal and child health by providing pre- and postnatal care information to expectant and new mothers. Hatugeo is located in the district of Ermera, where the infant mortality rate is 70 deaths per 1,000 live births, only three percent of mothers deliver their babies in a health care facility, and a higher percentage of children show signs of malnourishment and illness than in the rest of the country (10/3).
Address Water And Sanitation In Urban Slums To Curb Spread Of Diarrheal Disease
A lack of water and poor sanitation, a result of rapid urbanization being experienced in big cities and small towns throughout the developing world, urgently need tackling in order to curb the resulting spread of diarrheal disease “in what the U.N. terms ‘informal settlements’ — slums, as they are more commonly known,” Timeyin Uwejamomere, senior policy analyst for urban water and sanitation services at WaterAid, writes in this post in the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog.”
Doctors’ Support For MMR Vaccine Vital To Halt Measles Outbreaks In Europe, Health Official Says
“With almost 30,000 cases of measles and eight deaths from the disease recorded in the European Union so far this year, a leading health official is urging doctors to do more to ensure parents have their children vaccinated with” the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, Reuters reports. Marc Sprenger, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), “said MMR vaccine coverage rates across the region are currently around 90 percent, leaving significant groups such as children or young adults unprotected,” and that “it was crucial for pediatricians and family doctors to give balanced, evidence-based information to help parents decide on vaccinations,” Reuters writes.
IRIN Examines Decline Of Public Health Services In Lesotho
IRIN reports on a decline in public health services in Lesotho, writing, “In 2007, the government of Lesotho and [the Christian Health Association of Lesotho], which runs 75 health centers and eight hospitals … signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of making health services more accessible to ordinary Basotho who could not afford even the nominal fees that both state and CHAL-run health facilities charged. Patients would now get free medical services and drugs at health centers and subsidized medical care and drugs at hospitals. However, the resulting influx of patients put a huge strain on health centers and their supply of drugs and many over-burdened government and CHAL health centers have taken to referring patients to private clinics and pharmacies.”
