Archives: Morning Breakouts

In this post in the Huffington Post's "Impact" blog, Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University, responds to the GAVI Alliance's announcement on Tuesday that it will supply more than $1 billion in childhood vaccines to 37 of the world's poorest countries, writing, "As the Alliance takes perhaps the most significant step ever toward increasing access to lifesaving immunization with this new and exciting round of country approvals, the challenge will be to ensure that every piece of the puzzle is in place to deliver on GAVI's tremendous promise."

U.N. agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), are warning that South Sudan, the world's newest nation, "will face chronic food shortages next year due to internal and border insecurity, erratic rains and a huge influx of returnees from the North," IRIN reports. "U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Lise Grande said more than three million people (36 percent of the population) in South Sudan were classed as moderately or severely food insecure in 2011, and the burden was increasing," IRIN writes (9/27).

In this post in the Huffington Post's "Impact" blog, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, and Gro Brundtland, a board member of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, the former prime minister of Norway, and the director-general emeritus of the WHO, discuss the notion of "innovative financing for development" and how, "[f]aced with impending fiscal constraints, the international community has devised several promising financing models to protect investments in global health."

"Philippines authorities are warning of possible water-borne disease outbreaks following Typhoon Nesat," which ripped through the country on Tuesday causing widespread damage including power outages, flooding and landslides, IRIN reports (9/28). According to Reuters, at least 21 people have been killed by the storm and its consequences (Mogato, 9/28).

The African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) is "spearheading the fight against malaria" in Africa, bringing together 40 heads of state and "offer[ing] a compelling example of what is possible through co-operation, leadership, commitment, and sound management of national and international funds," Tanzania President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete writes in a post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog." With the launch of the "groundbreaking" ALMA scorecard for accountability and action last week, leaders are now able "to measure our own performance against a set of key malaria metrics including national policies, financial controls, delivery of prevention and treatment commodities, and, most importantly, lives saved," Kikwete writes.

IRIN examines an increase in new leprosy cases in Antalaha, a once-prosperous vanilla-exporting town in a remote region of Madagascar, where a 2009 military-supported coup brought the suspension of some foreign aid and trade benefits. The news service writes, "While people are becoming poorer and more susceptible to illness, the public health care system is receiving less money from the government."

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, "[a]long with our partners, both donors and implementers, [is] changing the story of scores of nations that were once devastated by three killer diseases -- diseases which seemed invincible," Global Fund Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece, adding "we are now saving more than one million lives every year."

"The focused attention that malaria has received by African governments and international organizations has had a major impact, with the rates of mortality coming down dramatically in the continent," and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) has helped lead this campaign, an IPP Media editorial states. However, "[a]s long as malaria continues to be Africa's leading killer, little progress can be recorded in other endeavors, because of its insidious effect," the editorial writes, noting that two percent of Africa's GDP is lost annually because of the disease.

Aborigines in Australia have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia than the country's general population, according to research by the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute and reported on Tuesday at a sexual health conference, the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports.

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, arrived in Nigeria on Tuesday, where he held talks with government officials and traditional leaders to discuss polio eradication efforts in the country's worst-hit northwestern region, Agence France-Presse reports (9/27). During the three-day trip, Gates, along with the foundation's CEO, Jeff Raikes, will "follow up ... on the Abuja Commitments to Polio Eradication, in which Nigerian federal and local government officials committed in 2009 to have at least 90 percent of children immunized against polio toward its eradication," Daily Times Nigeria writes.

"Several American aid groups are criticizing the U.S. government delay on deciding whether to resume large-scale food donations to North Korea" after recent flooding deteriorated health and food security in the country, VOA News reports. The five U.S.-based, non-governmental organizations "warn that if substantial aid is not permitted in the next six to nine months, many vulnerable people in the impoverished communist state could die from starvation," the news service writes.

"Cities in Iran, India, Pakistan and the capital of Mongolia rank among the worst on the planet for air pollution, while those in the United States and Canada are among the best, according to the first global survey released Monday by the World Health Organization," the Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle reports. "The list, which relies on country-reported data over the past several years, measures the levels of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers -- so-called PM10s -- for almost 1,100 cities," the news service writes (9/27).

In this New American opinion piece, Beverly Eakman, an author and former editor-in-chief of NASA's newspaper in Houston, writes of humanitarian aid, "With the U.S. debt having surpassed 100 percent of gross domestic product August 3, to $14.58 trillion, it's crudely entertaining to see how multimillionaire lawmakers in Congress and administrations both past and present find 'compassionate' ways to spend ever-more of taxpayers' money," asserting that "such expenditure is not specifically sanctioned by American taxpayers, and therefore constitutes theft by the U.S. government for what the State Department probably hopes will buy international good will."

PRI's "The World" recently spoke with Matt Ellingson, director of Program Development at Samaritan's Purse, an international Christian relief organization, who was part of a mission to North Korea this month during which five U.S.-based, non-governmental organizations were allowed to send observers to the country to monitor delivery of aid to areas affected by severe floods this past summer. The group "came away concerned about widespread malnutrition and starvation in North Korea" and "is now calling for an urgent humanitarian intervention," "The World" reports. The radio show provides audio of the interview and a link to a "factfile" on the North Korea food crisis published in The Telegraph earlier this month (9/23).

"More than a dozen kindergartens in Vietnam have closed to deal with an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed 111 children and sickened more than 57,000 this year, an official and the government said," according to the Associated Press/Washington Post. The southern province of Hau Giang, which reported 70 percent of the recorded 57,055 cases and 90 percent of the 111 deaths in the country, "has had 361 cases since June, and some 50 children are hospitalized," the AP reports. "The Health Ministry says more than 2,000 new cases of hand, foot and mouth disease are being reported each week. In a typical year, the virus infects up to 15,000 children in Vietnam and kills 20 to 30 of them," the news agency writes (9/26).

The Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, a fund backed by governments, the World Bank, the WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday that it will purchase more than $1 billion in vaccines against rotavirus, pneumococcal and other diseases through deals made with GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. to immunize children in 37 of the poorest nations, Bloomberg reports. "Wealthy nations donated $4.3 billion to purchase the vaccines as part of a plan to immunize 250 million children by 2015," the news service notes (Bennett, 9/27).