Archives: Morning Breakouts

Meanwhile, NPR reports on how an abortion rights organization finds the GOP presidential field lacking when it comes to candidates and their positions regarding abortion rights.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry (D-Mass.) released a bill (.pdf) on Wednesday that would authorize FY12 and FY13 funding for the State Department and foreign operations, as well as key programs and initiatives, Foreign Policy's blog "The Cable" reports.

In a post on the New York Times' "On the Ground" blog, Rwanda Works Director Josh Ruxin writes about two cousins who are "fighting the international brain-drain trend that is dangerously affecting medicine in the developing world, and [have] committed themselves to building local medical capacity in their native country" by establishing a university and medical school, called the Kigali Medical University (KMU).

NPR's KQED on Wednesday examined how France's 60-year-old network of preventive health clinics for children and parents, which provides care free-of-charge, is being threatened by the nation's flailing economy. "[W]hile it's unlikely that France will abandon its maternal and child health programs, it remains an open question whether social changes and economic reality might intrude into such a sacred French ideal," the article states (Varney, 7/27).

"A UNICEF official says a cholera outbreak in Congo has killed 279 people and infected more than 4,000 others in the last four months," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports (7/27). According to the VOA's "Breaking News" blog, "[a] cholera outbreak has been declared in four provinces with northeastern Orientale province showing the most cases." The WHO last week expressed concern that the disease could spread along the Congo River, according to the blog (7/27).

One year after the U.N. General Assembly "adopted a resolution declaring that safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right," top U.N. officials on Wednesday "stressed the need to realize the human right to water and sanitation, stating that it is critical not only to a life of dignity but also to achieving progress in the areas such as poverty reduction, boosting child health and combating diseases," the U.N. News Centre reports (7/27). Nearly 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water, and more than one million children die each year because of diseases such as cholera that are transmitted by contaminated water, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C notes (Krafczyk, 7/27).

The WHO on Thursday marked the first-ever World Hepatitis Day, recognizing a disease that affects nearly one of every three people in the world, the U.N. News Centre reports (7/27). According to a WHO press release, 1.4 million cases of hepatitis A occur each year, two billion people are infected with a hepatitis virus, and at least 130 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis C (7/28).

For the first time since the food crisis in the Horn of Africa began, a U.N. plane carrying 10 tons of food aid for children landed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesday, "as aid groups warned of a growing influx of hungry families from the famine-hit south of the country," Reuters reports (Sheikh, 7/27).

"When women are healthy and empowered, they can spark a ripple effect in their families, communities and nations that can lead to lower rates of poverty and stronger economic growth and productivity," Tamara Kreinin, executive director of women and population at the United Nations Foundation, writes in a "RH Reality Check" blog post. "By voting to reduce funding for international reproductive health and family planning activities, eliminate funding for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), and reinstate the Global Gag Rule, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs threatens to turn back the clock on women's health and has taken its disturbing war on women to a global stage," she writes, referring to the House FY12 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (7/27).