Latest KFF Health News Stories
GlobalPost Examines GHI’s Work To Address Chronic Malnutrition In Guatemala
Guatemala’s “vast inequality” helped it land “on the list of eight ‘plus’ countries in the Global Health Initiative (GHI) that President Barack Obama is focusing on as part of his expansion and revision of how the U.S. is funding and rethinking global aid,” GlobalPost’s “Global Pulse” blog reports in an article examining malnutrition in Guatemala, the wealthiest of nations in the first round of GHI plus countries.
Drug Companies Collaborate With DNDi Support To Develop Drug For African Sleeping Sickness
Researchers from Scynexis Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C., and Anacor Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto, Calif., sponsored by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, on Tuesday reported in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that a new experimental drug kills the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness in mice and will enter human clinical trials this year, ScienceNOW reports (Leslie, 6/28).
State Roundup: Minn. Officials Eye Health Cuts To Avert Shutdown
News outlets examine a variety of state health policy issues.
N.C. Gov. Vetoes Abortion Bill; 2 Kansas Doctors File Suit Against Kansas Law
The abortion issue continues to rile politics in Indiana, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Iowa, Texas and North Carolina.
Patients, Scientists In Different Corners For Cancer Drug Fight
The drug, Avastin, will be the subject of an unusual Food and Drug Administration hearing to revisit a panel vote last July that steered many doctors away from prescribing the drug for the treatment of breast cancer.
Interest, Uncertainty Surround Health Exchanges, ACOs
In other news related to health law implementation, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., has co-sponsored legislation to allow states to opt out of the health law until legal challenges related to it are resolved.
Providers And Privacy Groups Confused Over Tentative Security Definition
The Center for Public Integrity reports on why a specific standard is causing this confusion.
Viewpoints: Calif.’s Budget, Supreme Court Drug Rulings, The Avastin Debate
A selection of today’s opinions and editorials from around America.
Christie Signs Law To Cut Health Benefits; Malloy Also Seeks Trims
State employees’ health benefits are at the center of cost cutting efforts in the two states.
HHS: Half A Million Seniors Have Lower Drug Costs
As a result of health law changes to provide seniors with “doughnut hole” relief, Medicare recipients saved a combined $260 million on medicines as of the end of last month.
White House Backs Away From ‘Secret Shopper’ Survey Of Doctors
Late Tuesday the White House announced it would cancel its plan to study Medicare and Medicaid patients’ access to care.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about a new plan offered by two senators to cut Medicare spending — but top Democrats lined up against it.
Drug-Resistant Scarlet Fever Outbreak Has Infected Nearly 550 People In Hong Kong
An outbreak of drug-resistant and particularly virulent strains of scarlet fever has infected nearly 550 people and killed two children in Hong Kong so far this year, about double the Chinese city’s average annual total, the Associated Press reports.
Direct Incentives For Vaccination Would Increase Rates
In its first decade, the GAVI Alliance has helped prevent the deaths of more than five million children by introducing more widespread vaccination in low-income countries, “[b]ut, going forward, the alliance is going to have to think more about getting parents to vaccinate their kids
Experienced North Korean Aid Worker Says Hunger Crisis Imminent
North Korea has significantly cut public food aid and could be heading toward a hunger crisis, said Katharina Zellweger, head of a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s office in Pyongyang and “one of the most experience aid workers” in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
South Sudan Should Use Military As Force For Development
Calestous Juma, an author and professor at Harvard Kennedy School, writes in an East African opinion piece that as South Sudan prepares for independence on July 9, it “is the time” for the country “to chart a new path by defining a new role for its military” by “shift[ing] its military budget to development objectives.”
Stop Ignoring Historical Western Advocacy Of Sex Selection
Mara Hvistendahl, a correspondent with Science magazine and author of the recently published “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,” writes in a Foreign Policy feature that “as American politicians argue over whether to cut Planned Parenthood’s U.S. funding and the Christian right drives through bans on sex-selective abortion at the state level, the effects of three decades of sex selection elsewhere in the world are becoming alarmingly apparent. In China, India, Korea, and Taiwan, the first generation shaped by sex selection has grown up, and men are scrambling to find women, yielding the ugly sideblows of increased sex trafficking and bride buying.”
France 24’s Health Program Examines Challenges To Fighting Malaria In Madagascar
France 24’s video program Health examines challenges to fighting malaria in Madagascar, where some people who cannot afford newer artemisinin-based combination therapies use older, less-effective medications that can promote drug resistance and others misuse mosquito nets.
South African Circumcision Program Moving Forward With Support From Zulu King
NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday examined how a circumcision program in South Africa’s Kwa-Zulu Natal, run by the Society for Family Health at the Boom Street Community Health Clinic, “is gaining momentum” because of a decree issued last year by King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu about the importance of circumcision in helping to reduce the risk of HIV infection.
