Archives: Morning Breakouts

"[T]he number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high, ... with close to 50 million people living below the poverty line," Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, writes in an Austin-American Statesman opinion piece, adding, "We desperately need a national dialogue about the unique afflictions of the bottom 50 million, paying particular attention to their neglected tropical diseases [NTDs], which represent important stealth reasons trapping them in a vicious cycle of poverty" (10/26).

A closed-door meeting is on the justices' schedule during which they will review petitions regarding challenges to the health law. Their decision about how - and when - to proceed could be made public as soon as Nov. 14.

"The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched a consortium on Wednesday that would allow the public and private sector to share intellectual property to promote the development of new drugs to treat diseases such as malaria," Reuters reports (10/26). "Under the agreement between [WIPO], ... the companies and the non-profit BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), public and private sector organizations will share valuable intellectual property (IP) and expertise with the global health research community on WIPO Re:Search, a virtual platform," the U.N. News Centre writes (10/26).

"Instead of worrying about sheer numbers when the world's population hits seven billion next week, we should think about how to make the planet a better place for people to live in, the United Nations said" in its report, "The State of World Population 2011," released Wednesday, Reuters reports (Ormsby, 10/26). "The world must seize the opportunity to invest in the health and education of its youth to reap the full benefits of future economic development or else face a continuation of the sorry state of disparities in which hundreds of millions of people in developing nations lack the most basic ingredients for a decent life, U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said in the foreword of the study," the U.N. News Centre writes.

In this post in PBS NewsHour's blog "The Rundown," senior correspondent Ray Suarez reports on his time in Nicaragua with the NewsHour's global health unit for the national rollout of a pneumococcal pneumonia immunization campaign. The vaccine cost $100 per dose when it came to market in the last several years, Suarez notes, writing, "At that price, Nicaragua certainly couldn't pay to vaccinate all its children. The GAVI Alliance, formed as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, worked to find a way to close that yawning gap between great danger to children and a life-saving medicine, between deep poverty in Nicaragua and Pfizer's high costs."

Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), and Khai Hoan Tram, an Allan Rosenfield Fellow at amfAR, write in this Huffington Post opinion piece that what's missing from the discussion of foreign aid -- which accounts for approximately one percent of the U.S. national budget -- "is the fact that [it] is actually used to aid those in need while advancing our country's humanitarian and diplomatic goals. And it's working."

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has asked government workers to consider health care benefit cuts. Meanwhile, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing an overhaul of the structure of benefit packages.

GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog interviewed Ambassador Jan Eliasson, former president of the U.N. General Assembly and Sweden's former minister for foreign affairs, on how water and sanitation play a part in family planning, as the world's population approaches seven billion. Eliasson discusses his interest in women's reproductive health issues, strategies for increasing attention on these issues, and difficulties faced by policymakers on the issues surrounding family planning, among other topics. "We don't realize when you look at the issues of child mortality, women's health, or education, all the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) are affected by water and sanitation. I see a real need for a horizontal approach to health. Population issues and family planning are an integrated part of solving that problem," he said (Donnelly, 10/26).

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form a partnership to support new research and development (R&D) and production of new products for global health and agriculture, Agence France-Presse reports (10/26).

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is not just haunted by the similarities between the federal health law and the state health overhaul he signed while governor of Massachusetts, but also by the fact that despite this state measure, Massachusetts continues to have the highest health costs in the country.