Archives: Morning Breakouts

"The U.N. World Food Programme [WFP] said Wednesday that more Yemenis were going hungry because of rising food prices and severe fuel shortages brought about by months of political unrest," Agence France-Presse reports. "The months of violence and instability have pushed the already stressed Yemeni economy to the brink of collapse and forced millions of families further into poverty," the news service writes, noting that "WFP

KPLU 88.5's "Humanosphere" blog reports on the World Food Prize symposium and Borlaug Dialogue taking place in Iowa this week, where "about 1,000 people, including many former heads of state and top agricultural policy folk, are gathered together to talk about

This post in Population Services International's (PSI) "Healthy Lives" blog reports the results of a "survey of 507 Americans [administered] at the end of September [that] sought to capture what, exactly, Americans know about the foreign aid budget." According to the blog, the PSI survey asked participants how important it is for the U.S. to provide aid for foreign countries, what the most important reason for U.S. investment in global health and development is and whether it is important for the U.S. to invest in these sectors because recipient countries will become significant consumers of U.S. goods, and concluded that "[a] strong majority of Americans believe foreign aid is a good thing" (10/12).

India's Hindustan Times reports on "a striking contrast between rising economic prosperity and stagnating rates of malnutrition" in Mumbai, where "80,000 children ... are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished city in India." The newspaper writes, "Malnourishment in Mumbai could actually be worse than India believes," because estimates are based "on data provided by Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a government child-care program that reaches only a quarter of children in the city's slums."

In this "End the Neglect" blog post, Alanna Shaikh, a writer for U.N. Dispatch, writes that while "[a]t first glance, the new focus on cardiovascular and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) looks like trouble for the funding for things like neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) ... that conflict is mostly superficial. NCDs and NTDs have much more in common than their initials."

"Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labor force, says a report by the World Bank ... titled 'Gender Equality and Development,'" Business Standard reports (10/13). The report "said that while life expectancy had increased in low- and middle-income countries by 20 years since 1960 ... almost 4 million women died too early in the developing world compared to rich countries," with almost one million of these excess deaths occurring in India, according to the Times of India (Dhawan, 10/13).

"Vitamin D is needed to activate the immune system's response to tuberculosis (TB)," a finding that "could lead to new treatments for the lung disease," researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) said in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Agence France-Presse reports. "Researchers have long known that vitamin D plays a role in the body's response to TB, but the study ... shows it must be present in adequate levels to trigger the immune response," AFP writes.

In this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," Tim Wainwright, CEO of ADD International, writes, "It puzzles me why so much of mainstream development's resources, research, campaigning efforts and attention ignore disabled people," which account for one in seven of the world's population, or one billion people. "My challenge to the mainstream is this: employ representative numbers of disabled people. Make all your offices accessible. Ensure your development work involves and benefits disabled people equally," he writes.

"Over the past three years, malaria passed from first to third cause of infant mortality in Africa, Awa Coll-Seck, executive director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership [RBM], said Tuesday in Paris," Afrique en ligne reports. "'At least 1.5 million children were saved from the disease in recent years, thanks to the successful implementation of national strategies, supported by the international community,' she said," in an interview with [the Pan African News Agency (PANA)], according to the news service.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a letter to lawmakers on Wednesday "warned House Republicans about pushing ahead with a bill to cut funds for the United Nations, saying she would recommend that President Barack Obama veto the legislation" that is expected to be considered by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. "Clinton said the bill would severely limit U.S. participation in the world body, undercut U.S. interests and damage the security of Americans at home and abroad," AP writes (10/12).

"Twenty-six countries have 'alarming' or 'extremely alarming' hunger levels, with the situation deteriorating particularly badly in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to this year's Global Hunger Index," AlertNet reports. The report (.pdf) was released by the International Food Policy Research Institute, Welthungerhilfe, and Concern Worldwide and "focuses on the impact of rising food prices on the world's poorest people," the news service writes. "DRC

The federal government has not yet written guidelines that would help address this problem, even though the rules were mandated as part of the health law.