Archives: Morning Breakouts

"In the last few years, funding of agriculture has slowly been increasing after a generation of decline in investment in the sector, but not fast enough. In the L'Aquila pledge, the G8 made commitments to food security in 2009 of $20 billion. The G8 accountability report 2011 states that the group has already disbursed 22% of the money it pledged, and a further 26% is on the way," Lucy Muchoki, CEO of the Pan-African Agribusiness Consortium and a spokesperson for Farming First, writes in a Guardian "Poverty Matters Blog" post.

Nearly two-thirds of deaths worldwide are caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart and lung disease, cancer, and diabetes, which are increasingly prevalent and cost the global economy trillions of dollars, according to a U.N. report and preliminary results from a new study announced Monday at a press conference to preview the September U.N. High Level Meeting on NCDs, the Associated Press/MSNBC.com reports

Fast Company reports on actor Matt Damon's work to promote development and access to clean water in Africa.

In a post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, discusses the impact of witnessing how road development influenced the introduction of "miracle rice" in Vietnam.

On Monday, representatives from 143 countries met in Geneva to discuss whether chrysotile asbestos "should be added to an international treaty regulating the trade in hazardous chemicals," CBC Radio reports.

The final phase of testing for GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals' malaria vaccine, RTS,S, is underway in seven sub-Saharan African countries, and "[i]f the results, due to be released later this, year confirm the vaccine's efficacy in preventing malaria, it could be made available as early as 2015," IRIN reports.

Scientists at the Ragon Institute

John Dramani Mahama, vice president of the Republic of Ghana, recently spoke with NPR's "Tell Me More" about how Ghana has made significant gains against HIV/AIDS, bringing the prevalence rate down to 1.5 percent from nearly 4 percent.

Bloomberg reports that the Court has agreed to hear an appeal from the Mayo Clinic that concerns the types of diagnostic tests that can be patented.

"The time of neglecting malaria in pregnancy (MIP) should be over," Bill Brieger, senior malaria specialist at JHPIEGO, writes in a Malaria Matters blog post summarizing a session on malaria and maternal health at the recently concluded Global Health Council annual conference. He adds that "moving forward, strengthened monitoring and surveillance is needed to fine tune, revise and better target MIP interventions to make a bigger impact on reducing maternal mortality in endemic countries" (6/18).