Archives: Morning Breakouts

U.S.-based pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Company on Tuesday announced it will spend $30 million over five years to fight the rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in developing nations, the Indianapolis Star reports (Swiatek, 9/13). According to a Lilly press release, the company is launching the Lilly NCD Partnership "to identify new models of patient care that increase treatment access and improve outcomes for underserved people" (9/13).

As of October 2010, about 66 percent of Medicaid enrollees were in managed-care plans of some type.

For years, researchers have complained that the Census Bureau overestimates the number of uninsured.

After a landmark study published in May "showed major reductions in HIV transmission among discordant couples due to early treatment," Rwanda has decided to begin treating people in discordant relationships with antiretroviral therapy as soon as they test HIV-positive "as part of a plan to boost national HIV prevention and treatment efforts," PlusNews reports. "According to the government, an estimated 7.1 percent of cohabiting couples seeking voluntary counseling and testing services in the capital, Kigali, are HIV discordant," and "[i]nfections within stable relationships have been identified as one of the main sources of new cases in Rwanda," according to the news agency.

Worldwide, the number of malaria deaths has "fallen by a fifth over the past decade, reflecting an influx of funds to fight the disease with better drugs and mosquito nets, Roll Back Malaria (RBM) said" in a report (.pdf) released on Monday, Agence France-Presse reports. "In a press release, [RBM] claimed a 38 percent reduction in deaths over the decade, a figure based on world population growth and what would have happened if the mortality trend in 2000 had been maintained to 2009 without anti-malaria intervention," according to the news agency (9/12)."The WHO, which helped set up the RBM partnership, has also said the world can stop malaria deaths by 2015 if massive investment is made to ramp up control measures, but this is seen by some experts as an ambitious target," Reuters writes (Kelland, 9/12).

A VOA News editorial says U.S. support to Haiti since the early days of an outbreak of cholera, which has affected more than 439,600 people since it was first detected almost a year ago, "remains unfailing." The editorial continues, "To date, the U.S. government has spent more than $75 million on improved water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, ... has established and operated treatment centers and trained Haitian health care workers in preventing, diagnosing and treating cholera," among other treatment, prevention and monitoring initiatives. "While some humanitarian groups are gradually reducing their operations in Haiti, the U.S. remains focused on giving the Haitian government the aid and tools needed to prevent and treat this potentially deadly disease," the editorial says, adding, "The medical and public health response has been effective in limiting deaths associated with the disease" (9/12).

Two opinion pieces published on Monday examine the real-life health risks of an outbreak portrayed in "Contagion," a movie that opened this weekend in which a mysterious airborne virus kills thousands of people.

Several news sources have published opinion pieces regarding the ongoing famine in Somalia and hunger situation in the Horn of Africa, some of which are summarized below:

VOA News reports on a scientific breakthrough, which researchers call a "game changer" for developing new drugs, developed at Institut Pasteur Korea [IPK], a South Korean branch of the 124-year-old French research institute that is developing new drugs to combat diseases mainly affecting developing countries, including neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). "Combining imaging technology and biotechnology, scientists are now able to witness infections as they occur, in real time," VOA writes.

Contraceptive intrauterine devices (IUDs), also called coils, "might actually protect women against developing cervical cancer even though they don't stop the infection that commonly leads to the disease," according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Lancet Oncology, Reuters reports. "The results show that coil use did not affect the risk of [human papillomavirus (HPV)] infection, but was linked to a markedly lower risk of cervix cancer for both major types of the disease -- reducing the likelihood of developing squamous-cell carcinoma by 44 percent and adenocarcinoma or adenosquamous carcinoma by 54 percent," the news agency writes.

PBS NewsHour's blog "The Rundown" examines a "report from the U.N.'s Every Woman, Every Child Innovation Working Group, out in the Lancet Monday, [which] looks at some of the promising and innovative projects" aimed at improving maternal and child health. "More than 350,000 women die each year around the globe from complications of childbirth, and three million children die in the first month of life," according to the blog (Miller, 9/12). The report "was prepared as part of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's 'Every Woman Every Child' Initiative, a global strategy for improving women and children's health, launched last year," according to a U.N. Foundation press release (9/12).

The Washington Post examines how high rates of malnutrition among Somali children -- approximately 36 percent under age five are malnourished and almost 16 percent are severely malnourished, according to Somalia's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit -- are "the biggest test yet of recent improvements in assessing and treating malnutrition, changes that range from the coordination of care to the ingredients of food aid."