Archives: Morning Breakouts

BMJ reports on the health affects of civil unrest in South Sudan, which will become the world's newest country on July 9.

The U.S. will provide an additional $7.5 million in humanitarian assistance for refugees and internally displaced persons in Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, according to a statement from the State Department on Wednesday, RTTNews reports (6/16).

The meningococcal vaccine MenAfriVac, which is made by the Indian generic drug company Serum Institute, is "dramatically better" at producing a protective effect among African children in three countries than "older so-called meningococcal polysaccaride vaccines, including Mencevax from GlaxoSmithKline," according to a paper describing two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Reuters reports.

The White House on Wednesday outlined the schedule for First Lady Michelle Obama's upcoming trip to Africa, which will be "focused on youth leadership, education, health and wellness," Agence France-Presse reports(6/15).

"Japan plans to ask pregnant women and children to move away from radiation 'hotspots' that were found far away from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the government said on Thursday, reflecting new anxieties about the spread of radioactivity," Reuters reports.

"Preparing a country for disaster will become a core part of the UK government's development programmes around the world to ensure a faster and more efficient response to major disasters," the Department of International Development (DFID) said on Wednesday in an official response (.pdf) to Lord Paddy Ashdown's independent review of humanitarian disasters that was issued in March, the Guardian reports.

Feed the Future programs "will indeed address hunger at its core, offering farmers the tools and opportunity they need to feed their families. ... But on the other side of town we've deepened our investments in policies that increase food insecurity. A string of policy disasters ... have driven food price spikes and punished the billions of people who live on less than two dollars a day," Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, writes in a piece on The Hill's "Congress Blog."

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Wednesday as part of an event marking ASEAN Dengue Day signed a new action plan aimed at fighting dengue in the region, the Jakarta Post reports.

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged G20 agriculture ministers to agree at talks in Paris next week on a farm database that would gather and store market-sensitive information such as food stocks," Reuters reports. Sarkozy's call came during a speech Thursday "to farm unions gathered at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development headquarters," the news service writes (6/16).

Whether it's more skirmishes over the individual mandate, pushes to repeal and replace the sweeping overhaul or state-level pressure to join lawsuits challenging the measure, the health law continues to be a part of high-stakes political discourse.