Archives: Morning Breakouts

"As sales to developing nations become ever more important to giant tobacco companies, they are stepping up efforts around the world to fight tough restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes," the New York Times reports in an article ahead of a conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, that started on Monday. There, health officials are debating guidelines to enforce a global anti-smoking treaty known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) (Wilson, 11/13).

Africa has the potential to expand development with the help of international support and stability, Asha-Rose Migiro, U.N. deputy secretary general, said on Sunday at the opening of the 11th Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Next reports.

CQ Today looks at how changes in Congress after the November 2010 elections could affect efforts to overhaul the foreign aid system.

Governor-elect Sam Brownbeck said he would direct Attorney General-Elect Derek Schmidt to join the lawsuit.

Senator Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) on Friday said that poorly secured medical laboratories in East African countries, which hosts insurgent groups linked to Al Qaeda, are vulnerable to bioterrorism, Agence France-Presse reports.

Haiti's Health Ministry on Sunday said 917 cholera deaths had been reported in the country as of Friday and more than 14,600 people had been hospitalized, according to an update on the ministry's website, Reuters reports. The disease has been detected in six of the country's 10 provinces, according to the Health Ministry. "The central rural province of Artibonite, the epicenter of the epidemic, remained the worst affected, accounting for nearly 600 of the total deaths," the news service writes. As of November 12, authorities had recorded 27 deaths in the capital city of Port-au-Prince (11/14).

Lancet World Report examines elements of President Barack Obama's U.S. Global Development Policy strategy that he unveiled during the U.N. summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September. The article summarizes the new approaches described in the U.S. Global Development Policy, pulling direct quotes from Obama's speech, before writing, "Despite the excitement over a more unified, rational U.S. foreign assistance policy, concerns continue about the slow pace and lack of details. Some also worry that although an important goal of the new approach is to streamline and better organise the assistance structure, they say it remains unwieldy."

NPR's "SHOTS" blog examines the growing interest of pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine to protect against the dengue virus.

Education for women is the most important factor for positively influencing the health of women and children, Indian President Pratibha Patil said on Saturday at a meeting in New Delhi of The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), IANS/Sify News reports. "Education is a powerful driver of health. The relationship between poverty, lack of education and limited access to health services, is well recognised," Patil said at the start of the two-day conference (11/13).