Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Shifts in the world's climate and responses to those shifts, including construction of more irrigation systems, threaten to increase the spread of malaria, health experts say," AlertNet reports. "Because malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, its distribution patterns can be altered by changes in weather conditions, including changes in temperature, humidity, rainfall and the general availability of fresh water, said Suad Sulaiman, a malaria expert and health and environment adviser with the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences," according to the news agency.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake told reporters on Friday that "[m]ore than 300,000 children in the Horn of Africa are severely malnourished 'and in imminent risk of dying' because of drought and famine," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports.

Research of the common tuberculosis (TB) drug pyrazinamide, which is used in combination with other medications to treat the disease in a six-month regimen, "has now revealed that the drug does kill the latent form of the microbe, which does not cause observable symptoms," VOA News reports.

PBS NewsHour reports on polio eradication efforts underway in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, which "have been the source of all the polio viruses that have crippled children in India,

VOA News looks at a new drug compound developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that they say has so far "killed every virus it's been tested on in the laboratory." "The drug

UNICEF has warned that "[c]ontinuing fighting in various parts of Yemen, which has recently displaced thousands of people especially in Abyan Governorate and the Arhab District of Sana'a, could compromise the nutritional status of those affected

The WHO "is rushing to secure medical supplies for Libya" after the Dutch government on Monday released nearly $145 million in frozen assets from Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi's regime in response to a direct WHO appeal, PBS NewsHour reports. The news service features an interview with Tarik Jasarevic, WHO spokesperson for medical emergencies, who spoke "about the health needs in Libya and how the funds will be used."

"Vietnam's prime minister has put the country on alert as an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease continues to surge, killing 81 children and sickening more than 32,000 people nationwide so far this year, officials said Friday," the Associated Press reports. "It has spread nationwide but is raging hardest in the country's south, where nearly 80 percent of the cases have been reported. About 65 percent of the deaths have occurred in children younger than three," AP writes.

"The United States has offered North Korea up to $900,000 in emergency flood assistance but has made no decision yet on a broader request for humanitarian food aid for the isolated country, the State Department said on Thursday," Reuters reports. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland "said the flood assistance would not include food, and was considered separately from a standing appeal by North Korea for food aid to offset bad harvests that a U.N. report said earlier this year had left millions hungry," according to the news agency (Quinn, 8/18).

"The 36-member Nigerian Governors' Forum has launched a new initiative to rid the country of polio," VOA News reports.

Chagas disease, a historically neglected tropical disease that the WHO estimates affects about 10 million people worldwide, is drawing increased attention as infection by the parasite spreads from Latin America to developed countries, such as Spain and the United States, Science reports. "The main reason for this rise isn't the spread of insects carrying Trypanosoma cruzi but rather emigration from Latin America of large numbers of people who are already infected," the magazine writes.

August 19 is recognized worldwide as World Humanitarian Day, when "[w]e honor