Archives: Morning Breakouts

A team of researchers has "identified 17 potent antibodies whose discovery opened up valuable pathways in the search for an AIDS vaccine," Agence France-Presse reports (8/17). The researchers "at and associated with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the Scripps Research Institute, the biotechnology company Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences Inc., a LabCorp company, report in the current issue of Nature" that the antibodies are "capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of variants of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS," according to a joint press release (8/17).

During a visit to the Somali capital of Mogadishu, U.K. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell on Wednesday pledged an additional $41.5 million in aid to Somalia, to be distributed through UNICEF, BBC News reports. The funding will enable UNICEF "to provide supplementary rations for up to 192,000 people

"Health workers often treat patients for malaria even when a test indicates a different cause of the illness," a behavior seen across sub-Saharan Africa "that worries many health experts," PRI's The World reports. "Prescribing malaria medication to patients who don't need it wastes precious resources in a country already dealing with drug shortages

"We were deeply perturbed to learn that the negotiations for the Outcomes Document of the U.N. High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), a mere month or so away, had stalled because member states failed to reach consensus," Nalini Saligram, CEO of Arogya World, and Sandeep Kishore, an MD/PhD candidate at the Cornell/ Rockefeller/ Sloan-Kettering Institute, write in a Huffington Post opinion piece.

The NCD Alliance, which represents about 2,000 health organizations from around the world focused on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), "on Thursday accused the United States, Canada and Europe of harming efforts to fight cancer, diabetes, heart and other diseases because they will not agree to set United Nations targets," Reuters reports (Kelland, 8/18). The first-ever U.N. High-Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of NCDs is scheduled for September 19-20 in New York.

"Actress, singer and humanitarian Mandy Moore recently led a bipartisan delegation of congressional staffers on a trip to Cameroon to promote foreign aid and disease prevention there," Foreign Policy's "The Cable" reports.

VOA News examines the ethics of conducting clinical drug trials in developing countries, particularly in Africa. Several international ethical frameworks outline guidelines for clinical trials, "including the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki and the WHO's Good Clinical Practice Guidelines," but they are not mandatory, the news service writes.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is providing approximately $65 million to Pakistan's government to provide polio vaccination campaigns in the country, "one of the most difficult fronts against the disease as global health organizations risk missing their goal of stopping polio globally the end of 2012," the Wall Street Journal reports. "If Pakistan achieves certain goals with the money, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will repay the loan to Japan, according to officials briefed on the plan," according to the newspaper (Guth, 8/18).

"Insecticide-treated bednets, whose use is being widely promoted in Africa to combat malaria, may paradoxically be linked to local resurgence of the disease," according to a study published in the Lancet on Thursday, the Independent reports. "Growing resistance to a common insecticide used against mosquitoes, combined with falling immunity among the population as transmission declined, appears to have triggered a rebound in the disease," the news agency writes (Laurance, 8/18).