Archives: Morning Breakouts

Bloomberg examines how a trade agreement being negotiated by leaders of the nine Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries -- Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States -- could potentially make it more difficult for people in TPP nations to get new generic drugs and may impact U.S.-led global efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS as outlined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a recent speech at the NIH.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent speech calling for an "AIDS-free generation" through the use of multiple prevention strategies, including more widespread antiretroviral therapy, "was a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy, which has historically viewed treatment more as a costly expense rather than our most powerful prevention investment," physician Loretta Ciraldo and Katrina Ciraldo, a student at Boston University School of Medicine, write in this Miami Herald opinion piece.

"More than 30 million children in seven countries in East Asia and the Pacific are deprived of at least one essential service such as basic health care, safe drinking water or access to education, according to a United Nations study (.pdf)," AlertNet reports. According to UNICEF's "Child Poverty in East Asia and the Pacific: Deprivations and Disparities" report, "more than 13 million of the 93 million children in Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vanuatu and Vietnam suffer from two or more such deprivations."

"I suggest that GOP presidential candidates apply ... personal finance principles to evaluate why foreign aid is worth the investment," Samuel Worthington, president of InterAction, writes in a CNN opinion piece. He says foreign aid is "like an insurance premium" because it is a small portion of the federal budget but "small cash outlays can prevent major expenses later," such as investing in food security to prevent famine. Small investments now will help "today's aid recipients [become] tomorrow's consumers of American exports," which helps support domestic jobs, he writes.

An award is offered for sequencing of DNA of centenarians, and a medical journal reaches out to smartphone users.

"The triple threat of HIV, poverty and food insecurity is increasingly exposing children to abuse, exploitation and other human rights violations" in Lesotho, Inter Press Service reports in an article examining child poverty in the small southern African country. "In the country of 1.8 million, a good 500,000 out of 825,000 boys and girls live under 1.25 dollars a day and without proper shelter, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Almost 40 percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition and are stunted. Both under-five and infant mortality have persistently gone up in the past decade," IPS writes, adding, "To make matters worse, Lesotho is one of the three countries in the world worst affected by HIV/AIDS. Every fourth Basotho is infected with the virus, leaving a quarter of children orphaned" (Palitza, 11/23).

In this post in the Huffington Post's "Impact" blog, Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of the Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, examines the interface between trade rules and public health, discussing the implications of the Doha Declaration on public health since its inception 10 years ago, and addresses the question of how "countries balance the need to protect public health against patent rights that lead to high medicine prices and limited access for people in need." He notes that the winners of an MSF "ideas contest on the theme of 'Revising TRIPS for Public Health'" will present their ideas at a conference in Geneva next month, concluding, "I hope the winning ideas can generate some discussion and look towards affecting change, so that the next decade sees us moving towards more access to medicines for those who need them most" (11/22).

The Guardian this week posted the results of its 2011 International Development Journalism Competition. "Sixteen finalists -- eight amateur, eight professional -- were sent to the developing world to write a feature on a theme suggested by the non-governmental organization that hosted their trip," the newspaper notes. Many of the themes are health-related, including fighting malaria in Ghana, improving medical care in India, using insecticide-treated bed nets in Nigeria, access to family planning services in Zambia, and gender-based violence in Haiti (George, 11/22).

In this Forbes opinion piece, journalist Sarika Bansal examines five ways in which pharmaceutical companies can address neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including creating cross-sectorial research partnerships for neglected diseases; joining patent pools for neglected diseases; donating drugs for neglected diseases; creating facilities dedicated to neglected disease research; and allowing scientists to work on neglected disease, both formally and informally.

Humanitarian aid officials are concerned about high levels of malnutrition among young children at the Dolo Ado refugee camps in southern Ethiopia "despite the free availability of Plumpy'nut, a peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition," the Guardian reports. "'Maybe they're not eating it properly,' said Giorgia Testolin, head of the refugee section of the World Food Programme Ethiopia. 'The food is there, there is easy access, but why is the situation so bad? This needs to be investigated,'" the newspaper writes, adding a report (.pdf) out last month from USAID and the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET) noted some refugees, including children, sell or trade Plumpy'nut for other supplies, such as sugar, tea leaves, powder milk and meat. Overcrowding in the camps also presents problems, as 8,000 people await the opening of a fifth camp, which has been delayed because proper sanitation facilities are not yet ready, according to relief officials, the newspaper notes (Tran, 11/22).

In this Financial Times opinion piece, journalist Andrew Jack examines the challenges of family planning in some poorer countries, where public health programs "risk adding to population pressures and inadvertently setting back development," writing, "In a number of countries, notably in central and western Africa, health programs have contributed to cutting infant mortality rates, but birth rates have continued to remain stubbornly high. The unintended consequence is a fast-growing population that adds further pressure on poor families and fragile environments."

"Recurring drought, insufficient hygiene and ongoing regional conflict are driving a deadly outbreak of acute watery diarrhea (AWD) across the Horn of Africa, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported" on Tuesday, the U.N. News Centre writes. "WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva that more than 50,000 cases of AWD have been recorded in the region this year, resulting in over 700 deaths in Djibouti and Somalia," the news service notes (11/22).