Archives: Morning Breakouts

The following is a summary of multimedia resources published in recognition of World AIDS Day, observed on Thursday, December 1.

The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria decided to cancel Round 11 grant approval during a two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana, that concluded on November 22, according to a Global Fund press release (11/23). The following opinion pieces address this action.

"Although advances in vaccines, nutrition and family health have dramatically reduced the number of child deaths in the past 50 years, nearly eight million children younger than five still die every year," Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in this CNN opinion piece. She adds, "To me, this number is unacceptable, because most of these deaths could be avoided" by providing antibiotics, sterile medical supplies, or education on breastfeeding, as well by improving access to nutrient-rich foods and effective contraceptives.

"Decades of neglect, a failing health system and remote mountainous topography have created a 'crisis in maternal health,' according to a government taskforce in Papua New Guinea (PNG)," IRIN reports. "While progress has been made since the taskforce released its recommendations in 2009, some 250 women are still dying for every 100,000 live births, according to a 2008 inter-agency estimate," the news service writes, adding, "Maternal mortality rates in PNG doubled from 1996-2006, states the government's most recent national health survey."

President Barack Obama on Thursday renewed the U.S. commitment to ending HIV/AIDS in a speech marking World AIDS Day, and was joined by former presidents Bill Clinton, who participated by video, and George W. Bush, who spoke from Tanzania with that country's President, Jakaya Kikwete, the Independent reports (Popham, 12/1). According to the Associated Press, Obama announced U.S. "goal[s] of getting antiretroviral drugs to two million more people around the world by the end of 2013," bringing the total to six million people, and "to 1.5 million HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent them from passing the virus to their children." The news agency continues, "Despite Obama's more ambitious goals," which build on existing PEPFAR programs, "the plan's budget is not expected to increase. Instead, officials said the expanded targets would be funded through savings achieved by making the program more efficient and cutting the costs of treatment" (Pace, 12/1).

Male circumcision is "a practice that -- despite the evidence -- has yet to be adopted as much or as fast as experts had hoped," the Financial Times reports. "International organizations have publicly endorsed the importance of circumcision, and a number of guidelines have been established, but the response so far has been haphazard and funding remains modest," the newspaper writes, adding, "One reason has been that much government donor and philanthropic support for HIV prevention work was focused instead on more 'high-tech' alternatives such as vaccines and microbicides" (Jack, 11/30).

Al Jazeera examines HIV among women in India's Manipur state, particularly in the district of Churachandpur, where local non-governmental organizations "say more than one-quarter of the women use some kind of drugs and suffer from HIV; many, due to a lack of financial opportunities, will end up turning to" sex work to obtain money to buy drugs, the news agency writes. There are no long-term treatment facilities for people who use drugs or those living with HIV in the area, and there are no official statistics on how many women are living with HIV and using drugs, Al Jazeera reports. "The United Nations says these women can no longer be ignored," the news agency notes. Charles Gilks of UNAIDS India said the number of affected women must be determined and then organizations need to establish "interventions which those women can easily and reliably reach," Al Jazeera reports (Suri, 11/30).

The percentage of pregnant women living with HIV in South Africa "has inched up to 30.2 percent from 29.4 percent last year," according to the annual National Antenatal Sentinel HIV and Syphilis Prevalence survey released by Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in Pretoria on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reports (11/29). The survey "sampled over 32,000 pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in October last year," South Africa's Times Live notes (11/30).

"Afghans are living longer, fewer infants are dying and more women are surviving childbirth because health care has dramatically improved around the country in the past decade, according to a national survey released Wednesday," the Associated Press/Guardian reports. The survey, conducted by the Afghan Health Ministry in 2010 and "sponsored and funded by international organizations such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the U.S. government and the British Department for International Development," "indicates that increased access to health care in Afghanistan, more hospitals and clinics, and more trained health care workers and doctors have significantly contributed to an overall improvement in the health of most Afghans," the AP writes (11/30).