Archives: Morning Breakouts

Some of the issues to be addressed at the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) taking place this week in New York "are controversial, including those relating to intellectual property rights for new medicines, diagnostics and medical devices," James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, writes in an Al Jazeera opinion piece. "By continuing to assert that the Doha Declaration is in fact limited in various ways, U.S. and European trade negotiators have tried to discourage the granting of compulsory licenses on patents for high-priced drugs for cancer and other non-communicable diseases," he continues, before outlining a proposal called the "cancer prize approach" that would de-link drug prices from research and development incentives.

When the results of a large clinical trial testing the effectiveness of the RTS,S malaria vaccine among children in Africa are made available later this year, "it will be time to start discussing what to do with the vaccine," Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece. "If the vaccine is safe and effective, one of the most important questions will be how to pay for it ... and even though Andrew Witty, the CEO of the vaccine's manufacturer, GSK, has promised to price the vaccine at a point just above its production cost, this price may still end up being too high for many malaria-affected countries to pay for it," he writes.

As part of its special report "Healing the World," GlobalPost examines how the Obama administration's Global Health Initiative (GHI) is affecting U.S. health-related work in Kenya.

The World Bank's annual World Development Report, which was released on Sunday and this year "focuses on gender equality around the world, offers some stark facts about how women and girls fare in developing countries despite decades of progress," the Wall Street Journal reports (Reddy, 9/18). "The most glaring disparity is the rate at which girls and women die relative to men in developing countries, according to" the report, Reuters/AlertNet reports (Curtis, 9/19).

The Associated Press reports that, even with their emphasis on deficit reduction, most of the GOP presidential candidates don't seem to be talking about the Medicare drug program, a massive entitlement with future unfunded costs of about $7 trillion, as much as the 2010 health law.

After a six-month review of the financial systems at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a seven-member independent panel "recommended a substantial overhaul Monday in the grant organization's practices," the Wall Street Journal reports. The panel, led by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt and former Botswana President Festus Mogae, "said in a report the fund must improve risk management, simplify grant application processes, and place greater emphasis on results," according to the newspaper.

The New York Times describes how, as the U.N. begins its meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), Chinese and Indian generic drug makers "say they are on the verge of selling cheaper copies" of costly biotech medications used to treat cancers, diabetes, arthritis and other chronic illnesses. "Their entry into the market in the next year -- made possible by hundreds of millions of dollars invested in biotechnology plants -- could not only transform the care of patients in much of the world but also ignite a counterattack by major pharmaceutical companies and diplomats from richer countries," the newspaper writes.

Low-income countries "could introduce measures to prevent and treat millions of cases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and lung disease for a little as $1.20 per person per year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday" in a report released on the eve of the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) taking place this week in New York, Reuters reports (Kelland, 9/19).

"World leaders at a meeting of the United Nations on Monday will agree to a deal to try to curb the spread of preventable 'lifestyle' diseases," including heart disease, cancers and diabetes, also known as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), "amid concern that progress is already being hampered by powerful lobbyists from the food, alcohol and tobacco industries," the Guardian reports. "The scale and disastrous potential of these diseases has led the U.N. to call only its second high-level summit on a health issue on Monday -- the first was over AIDS in 2001. Months of negotiation have led to a draft declaration [.pdf] that will be signed at the summit," the newspaper writes (Boseley, 9/16).

Despite payments by drug and device companies, none of the more than 75 doctors named as participants were sanctioned.

The Wall Street Journal reports that as budgets tighten, school officials are more aggressively scrutinizing doctors' diagnoses that call for costly accommodations.