Archives: Morning Breakouts

In a speech to be delivered at the NIH, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to call Tuesday for a new push by the U.S. and other countries to harness recent science to stem the HIV/AIDS pandemic," the Wall Street Journal reports. She is expected to call for preventive tools "to be widely implemented in countries where the pandemic continues to rage, and to ask donors to step up aid to intensify the response, according to people briefed on the speech," the newspaper writes.

Politico reports that President Obama's initiative to institute medical malpractice reforms has stalled, falling prey to politics and tight money. In Texas, tort reform analysis reveals a widening doctor gap between cities and rural areas.

Ohio has ballot measures regarding the federal health law's individual mandate and collective-bargaining rights for public employees. Mississippians will vote on a 'personhood' amendment that aims to restrict access to abortions.

A Minnesota Daily editorial writes that a proposed nine percent cut in U.S. global health program funding "would drastically slow ... progress and hurt development and advancement in other countries," adding that "investing in the development of poor countries is good for everyone involved. When there are more highly educated, healthy countries, there is more prosperity for all."

Federal Judge Richard Leon says the regulation ordering cigarette makers to put graphic images on the packages may "unconstitutionally compel speech."

In his Foreign Policy column, "The Optimist," Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, responds to a speech to G20 leaders last week by Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he "suggested that a financial transactions tax, alongside additional taxes on tobacco and carbon, could be used to help rich countries meet a global target of committing 0.7 percent of GDP to development aid." Kenny writes, "The outlook is particularly grim in the United States, where traditional aid is on the congressional chopping block," but "[t]he good news is that the United States (and, for that matter, everyone else) could be doing a lot more for development without spending more money -- and in some cases even saving it."

"Researchers are developing an electronic nose that would sniff out tuberculosis (TB) like a Breathalyzer detects alcohol, putting an end to current time-consuming tests and possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year," the Globe and Mail reports (D'Aliesio, 11/7). A team of Indian researchers is planning to have a prototype in hospitals by October 2013, after receiving a $950,000 grant on Monday from Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to the Guardian (Tran, 11/7).

"South Korea on Tuesday authorized the World Health Organization [WHO] to resume distribution of Seoul-funded medical aid to North Korea, amid growing calls for humanitarian assistance for malnourished North Korean children," the New York Times reports (Sang-Hun, 11/8). "Seoul has authorized the WHO to release $6.94 million to equip hospitals in the North, said the official of the unification ministry, which handles cross-border ties," Agence France-Presse writes. "Seoul decided to unblock its WHO funding 'by taking into account its stance of maintaining its humanitarian aid for infants, children and other vulnerable people in the North, and the WHO's request,' [a South Korean] ministry official said on condition of anonymity," AFP notes (11/8).

One year after cholera was detected in Haiti, the New York Times reports on how, "[a]s the epidemic continues, the Cuban medical mission that played an important role in detecting it presses on in Haiti, winning accolades from donors and diplomats for staying on the front lines and undertaking a broader effort to remake this country's shattered health care system." The newspaper recaps a brief history of Cuban medical missions in Haiti since 1998 and writes, "There is no doubt that the Cuban mission has been vital here."

Reuters examines abortion, contraception and sex education in Russia, where, "[t]wo decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, wider availability of contraception and a resurgence of religion have reduced the numbers of abortions overall, but termination remains the top method of birth control in Russia."