Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Acknowledging that the development of medical countermeasures against bioterrorism threats and pandemic flu is lagging, [U.S.] federal authorities Thursday announced a $1.9 billion makeover of the system for identifying and manufacturing drugs and vaccines for public-health emergencies," Tribune Company/Seattle Times reports. "The overhaul includes manufacturing refinements aimed at shaving weeks off the time it takes to produce pandemic flu vaccine and a series of steps aimed at more quickly detecting promising scientific discoveries and getting them to market," the news service writes (Zajac, 8/19).

Federal officials say they will revamp strategies for dealing with bioterrorism and pandemic flu because efforts to develop medical solutions have lagged.

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), led by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former President Bill Clinton, recently announced more than $1.6 billion in projects to rebuild Haiti, "including a $200 million plan to create 50,000 new jobs in agriculture," Reuters reports.

The U.S. and other donor nations "significantly upped their pledges" of aid for the flooding in Pakistan during a U.N. General Assembly meeting on Thursday, in which the U.N. "appeared to [meet] its target of $460 million in immediate aid for flood-stricken Pakistan," the Associated Press reports.

A recent increase in the number of cholera outbreaks is threatening populations in pockets of the world, WHO's cholera group coordinator Claire-Lise Chaignat, said on Thursday, Agence France-Presse reports.

Democrats are "dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to 'improve it,'" Politico reports.

Federal officials said that new FDA laws safeguarding egg production would have prevented salmonella outbreak.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) visited Pakistan on Thursday "to assess the damage and relief efforts" as flooding continues and millions remain in need of humanitarian aid, the New York Times reports. According to the newspaper Kerry "said the United States would increase its flood aid to $150 million" (Masood/Gall, 8/19).

"Developing countries will bear 60 percent of the world's cancer burden by 2020 and 70 percent by 2030," according to a report released Thursday during the World Cancer Congress in Shenzhen, China, Reuters reports. These countries also lack the necessary "infrastructure