Archives: Morning Breakouts

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."

Speaking at a workshop on maternal morbidity and mortality in Korofidua, Ghana on Thursday, which was organized for journalists in the region, acting Eastern Regional Director of Health Services Larbi Addo challenged the media to help change negative perceptions about pregnancy and child-bearing in an effort to reduce maternal and infant mortality in the country, GhanaWeb reports. "He said the campaign to reduce maternal mortality was a shared responsibility and asked the media to support the health sector in educating the public on the subject," the news service reports.

A cholera epidemic in West and Central Africa, which is being worsened by heavy rains and flooding, has already caused nearly 40,000 cases this year in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, killing almost 1,200 people in the countries adjacent to the Lake Chad Basin, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), VOA News reports.

When the only community health care center providing medical and psychosocial care for people living with HIV/AIDS in India's northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir "closed down [six months ago] for lack of patients, it was a sure sign that the north Indian state had beaten back dire forecasts," Inter Press Service reports.

In this New York Times opinion piece, W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and a professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia University and a paid technical consultant on the film "Contagion," which opened this weekend, writes about the risks of an infectious disease outbreak as portrayed in the film, stating, "Those risks are very real -- and are increasing drastically."

Yves Engler, a Canadian writer and author, writes in a post on the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" blog that local citizens and investigative journalists have alleged that the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah) dumped feces and other waste in holes a few feet from water used for drinking and bathing in the central plateau city of Hinche on August 6 and again 10 miles from Hinche on August 21, as well as cites a report (.pdf) stating that sewage disposal at the U.N. base near Mirebalais 10 months ago caused a devastating cholera outbreak.