Archives: Morning Breakouts

Elsewhere, the Washington state attorney general gets approval from his state's supreme court for joining with other AGs to challenge the health law.

"As the Walter Reed Army Medical Center decamps from its D.C. campus this month and merges with the Bethesda Naval Hospital five miles away," NPR reports on the legacy of "the center's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, housed for the past decade on its own campus in Maryland, just outside Washington, [as] one of the world's premier research centers for infectious diseases." The piece, which is part of the news agency's series on the closure of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, notes, "No other place has done as much to prevent and treat malaria. And certainly, no one has done it so cheaply."

Two news outlets profile Washington-area research facilities.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Reuben Brigety, "[t]he top U.S. official for refugee issues, ... says that despite intensive efforts, relief agencies have made little progress in reducing child mortality rates at refugee camps along Somalia's border with Ethiopia," VOA News reports. Brigety, "comment[ing] as he returned from Dollo Ado, a sprawling camp complex in Ethiopia that houses 120,000 refugees from famine-stricken southern Somalia ... tells VOA that humanitarian agencies have made impressive progress in establishing health facilities and registering the backlog of refugees arriving daily from Somalia's famine zone. But he said children are still dying at an alarming rate of malnutrition and other complications, such as measles," the news agency writes.

Speaking at the 61st session of the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire, on Thursday, African Regional Director of WHO Luis Sambo said "that 46 Africa member countries still had remarkable challenges to scale before meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," Nigeria's The Nation reports.

"Finland's national health institute said on Thursday its latest research on previously found links between children's narcolepsy and GlaxoSmithKline's [GSK] Pandemrix vaccine against [H1N1] swine flu also involved a genetic risk factor," Reuters reports. In Finland, where 98 narcolepsy cases have been reported following the flu vaccinations, researchers found vaccinated children ages four to 19 "had a 12.7 times higher risk of experiencing narcolepsy than those who were not," the news agency notes (9/1).

In this New York Times' "Opinionator" blog post, journalist and author Tina Rosenberg examines the contrasts between refugee situations in rural camps -- such as Dadaab in Kenya, where tens of thousands have sought relief from drought and famine in Somalia -- and more urban areas, such as cities in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, where approximately 1.6 million Iraqi refugees are living. "At Dadaab, [refugees] receive food, medical care, basic shelter -- the emergency relief they need," but "[t]he camp lacks the money to provide even subsistence rations" and "the refugees give up their rights to move freely and to work," she writes. In urban areas, refugees "get help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, with an ATM card that allows them to withdraw money every month. ... They buy their own food and rent their own apartments. They use the local schools and health clinics," Rosenberg says.