Archives: Morning Breakouts

PBS NewsHour examines how the Canadian organization MEDA is using text messages to track malaria supplies in local clinics and retailers in Tanzania. The piece includes a related video featuring a MEDA employee giving a tour of the program (Cheers, 7/22).

In related news, the Observer reports on the impact mobile phones are having in Africa, including on banking, farming and health. The article includes case studies examining how mobile technology is being used in certain areas of the continent (Fox, 7/24). A related video documents how mobile phones are affecting Uganda's most remote communities (Eldin, 7/24).

Andrew Mitchell, Britain's international development secretary, and Kevin Rudd, Australia's foreign minister, describe their countries' responses to the drought and famine in East Africa in an Independent opinion piece. "The U.N. appeals are still underfunded by almost $1 billion. Britain and Australia urge the rest of the world to join them to work to prevent this humanitarian disaster turning into a catastrophe on a scale of the 1984 Ethiopian famine," they write.

At an emergency meeting at the Rome headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Monday, the agency announced "there will be a donors pledging conference Wednesday in Nairobi to raise as much as $1.6 billion to help fight famine in Somalia and other drought-stricken populations in East Africa," the Associated Press/Forbes reports (7/25). Prior to the meeting, the World Bank "announced it is providing more than $500 million to assist drought victims, in addition to $12 million in immediate assistance to help those worst hit by the crisis," a World Bank press release states (7/25).

According to the Haitian government, more than 5,800 people have died of cholera since the epidemic began in October, and health care workers have seen an increase in cases "[w]ith the rainy season now in progress," the Los Angeles Times reports (Gaestel, 7/24).

Rwanda "is one of only four countries in Africa which look set to achieve Millennium Development Goal 7 to ensure environmental sustainability, which includes halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation," Inter Press Service reports in an article examining hygiene and sanitation in the country. The other three countries are Mozambique, Ghana and Sierra Leone, the news service notes.

BBC News on Sunday looked at how Rwanda's national circumcision campaign, which began in December 2010 to help lower the incidence of HIV in the country, is testing a new "device called a PrePex, a three-piece mechanism consisting of two plastic rings and an elastic mechanism." The device "is clamped onto the penis without any need for sutures or anesthesia" to remove the foreskin.

The New York Times on Saturday examined research into several different methods of male contraception. "Male contraceptives are attracting growing interest from scientists, who believe they hold promise for being safe, effective and, also important, reversible," the newspaper writes. "Prompted by women's organizations, global health groups and surveys indicating that men are receptive, federal agencies are financing research. Some methods will be presented at an October conference sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation," according to the newspaper (Belluck, 7/23).

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday voted to "reinstate a ban on providing foreign aid to groups that perform abortions or provide advice about the procedure," The Hill's "HealthWatch" blog reports on the "so-called 'global gag rule'" (Baker, 7/21).