Archives: Morning Breakouts

NPR's Tell Me More on Friday interviewed Sierra Leone First Lady Sia Nyama Koroma about her work aimed at improving maternal health in her country. Koroma was in New York attending the African First Ladies Fellowship Program "that brings together Western European and American first ladies with their African counterparts for an exchange of ideas and best practices," according to the program. Since implementing free health care, "Sierra Leone has seen a 214-percent increase in the number of children under five getting care in health facilities and a 61-percent decrease in mortality rates in difficult pregnancy cases in health clinics," Tell Me More reports, statistics that Koroma said are due to "the participation of all of us" (Martin, 9/23).

As part of its special report "Healing the World," GlobalPost examines country ownership within the Global Health Initiative (GHI). The news service writes that Rwandan Health Minister Agnes Binagwaho told GlobalPost that a GHI focus on gender-based violence in Rwanda was a "curious" decision, which "[s]he said ... wasn't a priority and no one had asked her if that fit in with the national plan." According to GlobalPost, "U.S. health officials in Kigali said they were only following Rwanda's lead in their choice of programs." "'To choose gender equality reflected the fact that they've done phenomenally well in making it a priority,' said Nancy Godfrey, GHI field deputy for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Rwanda. 'Our focal area comes directly from the national gender policy ... Rwanda's national gender policy. So we didn't make it up,'" GlobalPost writes.

In addition to "essential money," "the right policies, government commitment and citizen accountability" are needed to decrease child mortality and improve other global health indicators, "[b]ut the sine qua non for effective health care delivery is health workers. Whether it's prevention, treatment or care, it's all about health workers," Jonathan Glennie, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, writes in a post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog."

Gordon Alexander, director of the office of research at UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, writes in this post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog" that a series published in Friday's Lancet on early child development (ECD) shows "that the payoff from concerted, integrated action around ECD would be enormous." Additional focus on and investment in ECD, particularly in the areas of nutrition, maternal and family health, and poverty alleviation, would help children reach their full potential in adulthood, which means "investing in ECD now will quite literally yield billions of dollars in later years," he says.

According to this report, some physicians and patients find "time-banking" - a method of bartering - to be an effective means of covering the treatment costs for low-income patients, mainly because it involves no red tape.

Justice Department must notify the 11th Circuit whether it will seek a full appelate court review of a suit against the health law, the Los Angeles Times reports. But the administration is torn about slowing down the inevitable move to the Supreme Court.

News organizations examine candidates' statements, including one by Gov. Rick Perry about Mitt Romney's book, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Perry on the HPV vaccine and Herman Cain on his cancer and the health law.

News outlets covered the high-stakes hearing today, focusing on the political background of the judges.