Morning Breakouts

Flooding In Pakistan Kills At Least 16, Affects ‘Dozens’ Of Homes

August 26, 2011 Morning Briefing

“In what appears to be a repeat — on a limited scale — of the 2010 flood disaster in Pakistan with northern areas affected mainly by flash floods sweeping down from the mountains after heavy rain, at least 16 people have died in the remote Kohistan District of Khyber Pakhtookhwa Province (KP),” IRIN reports. One official said the death toll could rise to 35 and “dozens” of houses have been washed away in the flooding, the news service notes. “According to media reports, hundreds of people are still stranded in remote areas of the flood-hit region,” IRIN writes (8/25).

Asia-Pacific Region Making Gains Against HIV/AIDS, But More Needs To Be Done, UNAIDS Report Says

August 26, 2011 Morning Briefing

Though the Asia-Pacific region “has seen impressive gains” in the fight against HIV/AIDS “– including a 20 percent drop in new HIV infections since 2001 and a three-fold increase in access to antiretroviral therapy since 2006 — progress is threatened by an inadequate focus on key populations at higher risk of HIV infection and insufficient funding from both domestic and international sources,” according to a UNAIDS report (.pdf) released on Thursday at the 2011 International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Busan, South Korea, a UNAIDS press release states (8/26).

Global Obesity Rates Doubled Over Last 30 Years, Researchers Say

August 26, 2011 Morning Briefing

“Obesity rates worldwide have doubled in the last three decades, even as blood pressure and cholesterol levels have dropped,” according to a series of papers published Friday in the Lancet, the Associated Press/New York Times reports (8/25). According to the researchers, “1.5 billion adults are overweight and another half-a-billion are obese,” and “the rise in obesity is likely to lead to an increase in the number of people afflicted by diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other illnesses, adding to the cost of healthcare,” VOA News’ “Breaking News” blog writes (8/25).

ABC News Features Six Videos On Global Health Issues

August 26, 2011 Morning Briefing

ABC News on Thursday posted six videos in its “World In 3” health series. The three-minute videos examine malaria in Uganda, neglected tropical diseases in Niger, pneumonia in the Philippines, sleeping sickness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, tuberculosis in South Africa, and parasitic worms in Brazil (8/25).

A.U. Pledges $46M For Horn Of Africa; USAID Official Discusses U.S. Response

August 26, 2011 Morning Briefing

At a meeting of the African Union (A.U.) in Ethiopia on Thursday, “African governments … pledged $46 million for the crisis in the Horn of Africa amid warnings that the emergency stretches far beyond hunger to encompass health, security and livelihood,” the Guardian reports. The amount fell short of the $50 million asked for by the aid group Africans Act 4 Africa, the newspaper adds, noting that “the African Development Bank announced a $300 million donation for long-term development in the Horn of Africa” (Tran, 8/25). Reuters reports that money is “to be spent over a four-year period, not to be used to bridge a $1.4 billion shortfall aid groups say they need for the emergency” (Malone, 8/26).

GlobalPost Examines Whether U.S. Policy Prohibiting Funding For Abortion Services Hurting GHI Efforts In Nepal

August 25, 2011 Morning Briefing

GlobalPost reports on President Barack Obama’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) in Nepal, one of eight GHI focus countries, and examines whether “a long-standing U.S. law” that “prohibits U.S. funds from being used for abortion services overseas for the purpose of family planning … is hurting its efforts to improve health care” in the country.

Injecting Mosquitoes With Bacterium Shows Potential For Dengue Elimination, Scientists Report

August 25, 2011 Morning Briefing

Injecting mosquitoes with the Wolbachia bacterium “can block them from transmitting the dengue virus and help control the spread of a disease that kills 20,000 annually in more than 100 countries,” a team led by Scott O’Neill, a geneticist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, reports in two papers published in Nature on Thursday, Reuters reports. The “researchers in Australia showed how female mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria passed the bug easily to their offspring, making them all dengue-free,” according to the news agency (Lyn, 8/24).

Cholera Strain Associated With Latest Pandemic Originated In Bangladesh, Researchers Report

August 25, 2011 Morning Briefing

“A cholera pandemic that has swept poor countries in three waves over nearly four decades has been traced to a bacterial strain that first emerged in Bangladesh, scientists reported on Wednesday,” Agence France-Presse reports. “The new probe, published in the British journal Nature, points to the likely role of modern travel in transmitting the bacteria — and the importance of the Gulf of Bengal as a ‘reservoir,’ or source from which the germ can always be transmitted,” AFP writes (8/24).