Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Despite [the] economic crisis rippling around the world," Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, "is pushing countries to continue foreign aid efforts to poor and developing nations, saying that every dollar of aid 'makes a huge difference,'" ABC News reports. ABC's "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour interviewed Gates last week after he visited Capitol Hill "to make his case to members of Congress." Gates is expected to "present a plan at the G20 Summit next week in France calling on the wealthiest countries to continue their aid efforts, despite austerity measures being taken around the world," the news agency writes.

In the clinic of Hilaweyn, one of four camps at Ethiopia's Dollo Ado complex for Somali refugees seeking relief from famine and poor security conditions, "[a] massive infusion of humanitarian resources ... appears to be turning the tide" against child mortality, according to Doctors Without Borders, which operates the clinic, VOA News reports. "When Doctors Without Borders opened the Hilaweyn clinic ... in August, children were dying of malnutrition at the rate of more than one a day. Two months later, the clinic's emergency coordinator Aria Danika said they treat 1,000 cases a day, and only one child has died in the past two weeks," VOA writes (Heinlein, 10/28).

"Commonwealth government leaders meeting in Australia agreed Saturday to step up efforts to eradicate polio worldwide, despite the Afghanistan war setting back vaccination efforts there and in neighboring Pakistan," the Associated Press reports (10/29). "Leaders from Britain, Canada, Australia and Nigeria, and" representatives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "on Saturday pledged tens of millions of dollars in extra funding to wipe out the disease" in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria -- the four countries where polio remains endemic, Reuters states (10/29).

At the recent International Lung Health Conference in Lille, France, IRIN/PlusNews spoke with Stop TB Director Mario Raviglione about the threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), its treatment and "the precarious TB funding gap," the news service writes. In the interview, Raviglione discusses the Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) approach to TB treatment, the issue of second-line TB drugs, and the future of TB funding, among other issues (10/31).

Several countries in West Africa, including Niger, Mauritania and Chad, are facing food insecurity crises "unless the international community acts now, the United Nations warned on Friday," AlertNet reports. "Communities in the Sahel, which faces increasingly frequent droughts, have not had time to recover from the last food crisis," which hit the region last year, the news service reports.

In this SciDev.Net editorial, T.V. Padma, regional coordinator for South Asia for the news service, recaps findings from the latest report of the Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), released last week, and writes, "Polio control in developing countries has received massive international support and funding, including free supplies of vaccines. Yet transmission of the virus remains. Clearly, there are problems other than funds."

As part of a special report called "Child Brides," GlobalPost features a two-part series looking at child marriage in Nepal. "The practice carries with it devastating consequences for young girls' health and wellbeing, child advocates say, and yet the social, economic and cultural pressures associated with the tradition make it difficult to end. Officially, it is against the law to marry under the age of 20, but these laws go ignored, particularly in remote areas. The child marriage rate is dropping in Nepal, yet the practice is still common among poor, rural families," according to the first article (Win, 10/30). The second article looks at how Nepalese women who marry young have reduced opportunities to receive a formal education (Win, 10/30).

With disease burden shifting from infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) over the coming years, "African health scientists need more funding and support to overcome the barriers and deal with a changing health situation on the continent," Olive Shisana, chief executive officer of the South African Human Sciences Research Council, said during a keynote address at last week's World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany, SciDev.Net reports. "Many of these diseases can be prevented by putting scientific research and health technologies to work, said Shisana, adding that this 'epidemiological transition is an opportunity for us to build capacity and to collaborate to tackle these diseases together for the benefit of the globe,'" the news service writes.