Archives: Morning Breakouts

Politico Pro examines concern about the impact an election-year health law decision could have on the institution of the court how it could could steer the justices away from this timeline.

As Congress looks to reduce the U.S. national debt, "both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have proposed slashing financing for the State Department and its related aid agencies at a time of desperate humanitarian crises and uncertain political developments," the New York Times reports. The proposed cuts to President Barack Obama's FY12 spending request would be "the first significant cuts in overseas aid in nearly two decades, a retrenchment that officials and advocates say reflects the country's diminishing ability to influence the world," according to the newspaper. The reductions would affect global health programs and humanitarian assistance for disaster-hit areas, among other programs, the newspaper notes.

Uganda's Daily Monitor reports on the status of the country's free health care system, which it writes "is in crisis despite the billions of shillings of mostly donor money flowing in every year." According to the newspaper, "Visits to a dozen health centers across the country revealed a chronic shortage of beds, drugs and medical personnel, confirming a recent verdict by the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda that 'service delivery and general care is almost not there.'"

The Guardian examines a text messaging program in Tanzania initiated by Vodacom Tanzania and local NGO Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) that utilizes Africa's mobile phone banking system, M-Pesa, to provide women suffering from obstetric fistula, caused by difficult childbirth, with the funds necessary to travel to health facilities for treatment. "CCRBT and Vodacom have now appointed a team of 60 'ambassadors' to travel around the country diagnosing women with the condition. Within an hour of an ambassador finding a patient a date is set for surgery and money for transport is texted to the ambassador, who takes the patient to the bus stop," according to the Guardian.

In this post in USAID's "IMPACTblog," Rick Scott, mission director of USAID in Timor-Leste, reports on a health-focused field trip to the "sub-village" of Hatugeo in Timor-Leste's central highlands where USAID-trained community health workers are working to improve maternal and child health by providing pre- and postnatal care information to expectant and new mothers. Hatugeo is located in the district of Ermera, where the infant mortality rate is 70 deaths per 1,000 live births, only three percent of mothers deliver their babies in a health care facility, and a higher percentage of children show signs of malnourishment and illness than in the rest of the country (10/3).

A lack of water and poor sanitation, a result of rapid urbanization being experienced in big cities and small towns throughout the developing world, urgently need tackling in order to curb the resulting spread of diarrheal disease "in what the U.N. terms 'informal settlements' -- slums, as they are more commonly known," Timeyin Uwejamomere, senior policy analyst for urban water and sanitation services at WaterAid, writes in this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog."

"With almost 30,000 cases of measles and eight deaths from the disease recorded in the European Union so far this year, a leading health official is urging doctors to do more to ensure parents have their children vaccinated with" the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, Reuters reports. Marc Sprenger, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), "said MMR vaccine coverage rates across the region are currently around 90 percent, leaving significant groups such as children or young adults unprotected," and that "it was crucial for pediatricians and family doctors to give balanced, evidence-based information to help parents decide on vaccinations," Reuters writes.

IRIN reports on a decline in public health services in Lesotho, writing, "In 2007, the government of Lesotho and [the Christian Health Association of Lesotho], which runs 75 health centers and eight hospitals ... signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of making health services more accessible to ordinary Basotho who could not afford even the nominal fees that both state and CHAL-run health facilities charged. Patients would now get free medical services and drugs at health centers and subsidized medical care and drugs at hospitals. However, the resulting influx of patients put a huge strain on health centers and their supply of drugs and many over-burdened government and CHAL health centers have taken to referring patients to private clinics and pharmacies."

Cambodia's director of dengue control at the Ministry of Health, Ngan Chantha, said on Monday that from January to September of this year, 12,392 cases of dengue fever had been reported and 54 children have died of the disease, Xinhua reports. In all of 2010, 5,497 cases of dengue and 37 child deaths from the disease were recorded, according to the news agency.

"The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with HIV," according to a study involving 3,800 sero-discordant couples in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, the New York Times reports. The study, led by researchers at the University of Washington and published Monday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, also found that when the contraceptive was "used by HIV-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception," the newspaper writes. In addition, the study "found that oral contraceptives appeared to increase risk of HIV infection and transmission, but the number of pill users in the study was too small to be considered statistically significant, the authors said," according to the New York Times.

At an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Barbara Bush, CEO of Global Health Corps and a board member of Population Services International (PSI), told the Daily Caller that reducing foreign aid as part of efforts to reduce the national debt would have "enormous implications for the U.S. if we don't continue the efforts that we've already started" (Ballasy, 10/3). The event marked the launch of a campaign called "The Power of 1%," sponsored by PSI, FHI360, PATH, World Vision and ONE and aimed at highlighting "the economics of global health and the benefits U.S. investments overseas have for Americans at home," according to a campaign press release (.pdf) (10/3).

McClatchy reports that GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is increasingly under the microscope for how he handled funds for public pensions and state teachers' health care.

Health care workers fleeing the besieged Libyan city of Sirte on Sunday said people wounded in the fighting "are dying on the operating table because fuel for the hospital generator has run out," Reuters reports. "The fighting has entered its third week and civilians are caught up in a worsening humanitarian crisis," the news agency writes, adding that "[a]id workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who brought medical supplies into Sirte on Saturday could not reach the hospital because of shooting." The organization said it plans to return to Sirte and reach the hospital if security allows, Reuters notes (10/2).