Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Using GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix vaccine to protect girls against the [human papillomavirus (HPV)] that causes cervical cancer is so effective that health authorities could reduce the need for later cervical screening," according to two studies published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Oncology, Reuters reports. In a large efficacy trial involving 20,000 healthy women from 14 countries on four continents, researchers from the U.S. and Finland found the vaccine "'offers excellent protection' against two key strains of [HPV], particularly when given to young adolescent girls before they become sexually active" and "found the vaccine partially protects against several other cancer-causing HPV types that it is not specifically designed to target, giving protection against a group of strains that together cause about 85 percent of cervical cancer worldwide," the news service writes.

The Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti on Tuesday "filed claims with the United Nations seeking damages on behalf of more than 5,000 Haitian cholera victims and their families," the Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle reports (Daniel, 11/8).

IT systems can improve care but have also led to "dosing errors, failure to detect fatal ailments and treatment delays."

The Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria has delayed the closing date for applications for its next round of funding, reduced the estimated amount of money that will be available in that round, and potentially delayed the disbursement of the funds until 2013, PlusNews reports. "The delay in Round 11 funding was announced at the Fund's latest board meeting on 26 September, the second such delay, which has pushed the application deadline back to at least 1 March 2012," the news service notes.

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).