Archives: Morning Breakouts

VOA News examines how Kenya's National Aids Control Council and STI Control Program (NASCOP) is considering proposing mandatory HIV testing for adults and children who seek medical care for other conditions, noting that some AIDS organizations are expressing ethical concerns because of continuing stigma and discrimination. For now, "fears of mandatory testing in Kenya are premature, as Kenyan law currently bans such practices," the news service writes (Onyiego, 9/30).

India's minister of development is promoting a campaign on public hygiene, after a UNICEF report found "that India accounts for 58 percent of the world's population practicing open defecation," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. "Jairam Ramesh says the revelation is a source of national shame and a 'sad commentary' on society's failure to address the issue through education and better sanitation," the AP writes. According to the AP, the Indian government "says it spends $350 million a year to build rural toilets, but some 638 million still rely on fields or quiet corners" (10/2). The public awareness campaign is expected to last one month, according to Xinhua (10/2).

Chad's President Idris Deby, alongside Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on Friday launched a three-day polio vaccination campaign at the Friendship China-Chad hospital "as part of efforts to rid the central African nation of the infectious disease," AlertNet reports. According to the WHO, "of the 401 declared cases of polio around the globe this year, 114 were in Chad, making it the world's worst-hit nation," the news service writes. Polio was presumed to be eradicated from Chad, which did not report any cases between June 2000 and July 2003, but the country has experienced a resurgence of the disease since 2003, AlertNet notes (Nako, 10/1).

Central African Republic Health Minister Jean-Michel Mandaba on Friday declared a new outbreak of cholera in the south of the country had already killed at least 10 people, Agence France-Presse reports. "Mandaba also urged the country's 'bilateral and multilateral partners' to provide financial and technical aid," the news agency writes. Health officials two months ago warned of a possible outbreak because of cases in nearby countries, according to the news agency (10/1).

"Vancouver's Insite clinic, the only such safe-injection site for [people who use drugs] in North America, can stay open, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday in a landmark defeat for the federal government," Reuters reports. "The country's top court ... ruled unanimously that closing the site would threaten the lives of drug users and therefore violate their human rights," the news agency writes (Ljunggren, 9/30).

Inter Press Service reports on the practice of breast ironing in Cameroon, a custom carried out by one-quarter of mothers in the country that is meant to reverse female sexual development in an effort "to avoid sexual contact between young girls and boys." The news service writes, "An estimated one in four girls suffers from the practice in their childhood. Breast ironing is a traditional ritual in which, by using heated and flat objects, a girl's growing breasts are pressed in order to suppress and reverse their development."

"Angola has tripled its spending on health care since 2006, but for the vast majority of Angolans who can't afford sparkling new private clinics -- or better yet, care abroad -- a trip to the hospital is still a nightmare," Agence France-Presse reports. "Despite its oil wealth, in 2006 Angola ranked ninth from the bottom in the world on health spending, which accounted for just 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Since then, spending per person has tripled from $64 to $204, according to World Health Organization data," according to AFP.

News outlets examine what is likely to be the high court's biggest case of the new term, which begins Monday.

In this Daily Monitor opinion piece, Anthony Masake of the Uganda Law Society stresses the importance of addressing maternal mortality in Uganda and asserts that the country cannot achieve development without increased efforts to meet national maternal health targets. He places emphasis on the need to invest in midwifery and nursing services, among other strategies, writing, "Within the context of inadequate financial resources, mounting health demands, escalating health care costs, rising population, and heightened public expectations, midwifery and nursing services present a platform from which we can scale-up health interventions to assist in meeting national health targets."

"In the first study to examine" the effects of a U.S. policy prohibiting foreign aid from going to any organization that performs abortions or provides information about or referral for the procedure as a method of family planning (often called the "Global Gag Rule" or "Mexico City Policy"), Stanford researchers Eran Bendavid and Grant Miller found that "the number of abortions increased in African countries where U.S. support for NGOs was cut the most," according to a Stanford University news release (Gorlick, 9/28).

In a Huffington Post opinion piece, Kolleen Bouchane, director of ACTION, asks whether President Barack Obama will "heed Archbishop [Desmond] Tutu's call to action" in a recent Washington Post opinion piece "and do his part to end AIDS." She says, "While campaigning, President Obama promised to expand PEPFAR 'by $1 billion a year in new money over the next five years' and provide $50 billion by 2013 to fight HIV/AIDS worldwide. We are not on track to see even those promises become reality. We are not on track for the leadership to change the course of HIV and AIDS that Tutu has called for."

In this Washington Times opinion piece, Chai Ling, president of the non-profit group All Girls Allowed and author of "A Heart for Freedom," examines the issue of abortions performed on single women in China in relation to the country's family planning policy, which in most provinces requires couples to be married to obtain a birth permit, without which they are not permitted to have a child. She writes, "Though the problem of skyrocketing abortion rates among single Chinese women has been highlighted by the media and attributed to a lack of sex education, no one has connected the problem to this tragic equation: no marriage certificate, no birth permit. No birth permit, no baby. Millions of unmarried women in China get pregnant, but none is allowed to give birth to her baby."