Latest KFF Health News Stories
Nigerian Vaccine Summit An Opportunity To Translate Political Will Into Action
In this post in the Huffington Post Blog, Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC), reports on the Nigerian Vaccine Summit, where Nigeria’s leaders will meet this week to discuss children’s health in the country. “With the world’s second largest number of child deaths each year, many of which are due to diseases that could be prevented with vaccines, yet with immunization coverage rates that are lower than many other countries in the region, Nigeria has a major opportunity to save lives by raising immunization coverage and introducing new vaccines against pneumonia and diarrhea, the leading killers of children worldwide,” he writes. Levine recounts progress made in recent years to address immunization and child mortality, but notes that “more remains to be done.”
“On Saturday April 7th, Joyce Banda became Africa’s second sitting female president,” Lyndon Haviland, a senior strategy fellow at Aspen Global Health and Development, notes in this AlertNet opinion piece, writing, “President Banda offers women in Africa a second chance to experience women’s leadership (Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s recent Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates what can happen when women lead) — and for the women of Malawi that cannot come soon enough.” As “[a] longtime advocate for women’s health, education and gender equality, Banda offers women in Malawi hope for a better future,” Haviland writes, noting, “As a founding member of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, Banda has been working on the international stage to accelerate progress toward universal access to reproductive health.”
Washington Post Examines Research Assessing Public Health Benefits Of Clean Cookstoves
“One of the most talked-about public-health initiatives is improving indoor air quality in the rural developing world,” the Washington Post reports, noting “Over the past two years, the United States has pledged $105 million to fighting the cookstove problem.” The newspaper highlights the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, founded with the help of the U.S. government in 2010, which “aims to help 100 million households replace their stoves with clean alternatives by 2020.”
New Report On Child Health, Education Shows Development Aid’s Effectiveness
“In an age of austerity, when everyone is feeling the pinch, some question whether we should continue giving aid to poor countries,” Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children U.K., writes in a Telegraph opinion piece. He says “[t]he resounding answer is yes, according to a new report [.pdf], … which for the first time presents quantifiable evidence of the impact of aid on child survival, health and education” (4/17). The joint report, by the Overseas Development Institute, Save the Children and UNICEF, “analyzes the improvements to children’s lives during the past two decades in five sectors: health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, and child protection,” according to the report website (4/17). The report’s “findings are inspiring,” Forsyth writes, noting, “Four million fewer children aged under five died in 2010 than in 1990.”
World Bank Selects U.S. Nominee Jim Kim As President
“The World Bank on Monday chose Korean-born American health expert Jim Yong Kim as its new president, maintaining Washington’s grip on the job and leaving developing countries frustrated with the selection process,” Reuters reports (Wroughton, 4/16). “The 52-year-old president of Ivy League college Dartmouth beat Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to the post, the first time in the World Bank’s history that the U.S. candidate has faced a serious challenge,” the Guardian writes (Rushe, 4/16). “The Korean-American physician and anthropologist, who spent decades working on diseases such as tuberculosis and the AIDS virus, will be the bank’s first leader drawn from the development world rather than politics or finance,” the Wall Street Journal notes (Reddy, 4/16).
“The World Bank on Monday chose Korean-born American health expert Jim Yong Kim as its new president, maintaining Washington’s grip on the job and leaving developing countries frustrated with the selection process,” Reuters reports (Wroughton, 4/16). “The 52-year-old president of Ivy League college Dartmouth beat Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to the post, the first time in the World Bank’s history that the U.S. candidate has faced a serious challenge,” the Guardian writes (Rushe, 4/16). “The Korean-American physician and anthropologist, who spent decades working on diseases such as tuberculosis and the AIDS virus, will be the bank’s first leader drawn from the development world rather than politics or finance,” the Wall Street Journal notes (Reddy, 4/16).
Haiti, the U.S. and other international partners on Monday launched “a nationwide vaccination campaign in the Caribbean country that seeks to curb or prevent infectious diseases, health officials said,” the Associated Press/Fox News reports. The campaign will include immunizations against measles, rubella and polio, as well as the pentavalent vaccine, which is effective against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza type b, according to the news agency. Immunization rates are low in Haiti, with the WHO reporting slightly more than half of the population immunized for measles and polio, but the current campaign aims to vaccinate 90 percent of Haiti’s youth population, according to Health Minister Florence Duperval Guillaume, the news agency notes.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday announced it has formed an alliance “with the Brazilian Ministry of Health in the latest expansion of the foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative,” the Puget Sound Business Journal reports (Bauman, 4/16). The strategic alliance, which will “explore new ways of tackling challenges associated with vaccines, nutrition, maternal and child health, and infectious disease control,” builds on existing collaborations “to control tuberculosis and dengue fever and improve productivity among small famers,” according to a joint press release from the Gates Foundation and the Brazilian Ministry of Health (4/16).
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including health policy reports from the presidential campaign trail as well as news from the states regarding abortion laws.
Questions Surround Medicaid Expansion, Insurance Subsidies
News outlets report on how a range of health law provisions are taking shape — from details of the proposed rule federal subsidies to buy health insurance on state-based exchanges, to its Medicaid expansion and accountable care organizations.
Entitlement Programs At Center Of Capitol Hill’s Gathering Budget Storm
The likely and emerging partisan clash in Congress could force GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to take difficult policy positions in the fall — just as the campaign is coming to an end. Meanwhile, this week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers will wrestle with a number of health care issues.
Responses To U.S. Nomination Of Jim Kim For World Bank Presidency
The following is a summary of several recent pieces published in response to the U.S. nomination of Jim Yong Kim to be the next president of the World Bank.
Use Of Sewage-Contaminated Water To Irrigate Crops Poses Disease Risk In Zimbabwe, IRIN Reports
IRIN examines how local Zimbabwean farmers’ usage of water containing raw sewage to irrigate their crops poses a risk of disease transmission to people who consume the vegetables. In the capital Harare, less than half of the raw sewage produced is treated before being sent back into tributaries, according to IRIN, which notes, “In a recent report, Harare mayor Muchadeyi Masunda said 60 percent of the capital’s residents did not have access to clean water, and 10 percent relied on boreholes and unprotected wells.” Since a cholera outbreak in 2008, UNICEF and other international donors have been helping Zimbabwean municipalities treat their water, but the UNICEF program is winding down, leaving some unsure whether local authorities “can go it alone,” IRIN writes (4/16).
Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Offer Hope Of Malaria Eradication Amid Growing Drug Resistance
“In recent weeks, the emergence on the Thai-Myanmar border of malaria strains resistant to artemisinin, a plant-derived drug, have led to pessimistic headlines and reminders of the setback caused by resistance to the drug chloroquine, which began in the 1950s,” columnist and author Matt Ridley writes in the Wall Street Journal’s “Mind & Matter,” noting, “April 25 is World Malaria Day, designed to draw attention to the planet’s biggest infectious killer.” He continues, “For this reason, prevention generally works better than cure in eradicating infectious diseases: Vaccination beat smallpox, clean water beats cholera, less crowded living beats tuberculosis and protection from mosquitoes beats malaria.”
WHO, U.N.-Water Report Examines Access To Safe Drinking Water, Improved Sanitation
“Nearly 780 million people are deprived of safe drinking water — and 2.5 billion lack access to improved sanitation — all because governments aren’t spending scarce resources wisely, according to a joint report [.pdf] of the World Health Organization and U.N.-Water,” VOA News reports. Though “more than two billion people gained access to safe drinking water and 1.8 billion gained access to improved sanitation” between 1990 and 2010, billions of people still lack these basic services, the report noted, according to the news service.
WHO Report Discusses Financing, Coordinating R&D For Health Needs In Developing Countries
This post on IntraHealth International’s “Global Health Blog” discusses a new report (.pdf) from the WHO, titled “Research and Development to Meet Health Needs in Developing Countries: Strengthening Global Financing and Coordination,” which “concludes that ‘all countries should commit to spend at least 0.01 percent of GDP on government-funded R&D [research and development] devoted to meeting the health needs of developing countries.'” The post states, “The report has a double significance. First, it is a vigorous statement of the need for a binding agreement on health innovation to address diseases that mostly affect developing countries. Second, it is an important concrete step on the long path to it” (Chiscop, 4/13).
Global Fund’s Restructuring Shows Organization’s Viability
This post by writer Cynthia Schweer in Foreign Policy Blogs Network describes the recent restructuring of the Secretariat at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, with a focus on grant management. The reorganization is “important” because “[a]fter an age of largesse in global health funding, the financial crisis has caused funding increases to come to a screeching halt,” Schweer writes, saying, “Despite commitments that far outstretch current revenues, the Global Fund is still the most viable multilateral providing funding for global health.” She concludes, “Slowing down the pace of progress at this critical juncture will have implications that reverberate far beyond the realm of current programs” (4/13).
U.S. Nominee Jim Kim Likely To Emerge As World Bank President
“Jim Yong Kim, the U.S. nominee, seems certain to become the next president of the World Bank after developing countries failed in an effort to unite behind a single candidate,” the Financial Times reports, noting, “Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former Colombian finance minister, withdrew from contention and endorsed Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister, after she won wider support among a group of developing countries on Friday.” According to the newspaper, “The World Bank’s executive board met on Friday to discuss interviews given by the three candidates,” and “Kim, a health expert and president of Dartmouth College, is likely to emerge as the new president as early as Monday after the board takes a straw poll” (Harding/Fontanella-Khan/Leahy, 4/13).
U.S. Should Separate Diplomatic Pressures On N. Korea From Humanitarian Assistance, Provide Food Aid
A Seattle Times editorial says a “radical response” to North Korea’s rocket launch would be to “[k]eep diplomatic channels open with the 240,000 tons of food aid planned before” the launch. “Providing food aid is wholly apart from maintaining political and economic pressure on the country,” the editorial says, adding, “Sending food does not preclude international sanctions to deny North Korea access to electronic technology and military hardware.” The editorial suggests “[s]end[ing] the food aid with an insurance policy of sorts. Use the connections and credibility of nongovernmental organizations, including Mercy Corps and World Vision, to track the deliveries. … Get the United Nations involved as well.” The editorial concludes, “Keep diplomatic channels open. Move beyond the provocations and deliver basic food relief” to the more than one-quarter of North Koreans in need (4/15).
Study Says Mass. Health Reform Not A Budget Hardship
A study from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation says that the commonwealth’s health law has amounted to only a small increase in spending on health care. In the meantime, some struggling municipalities in Massachusetts have opted out of a new law that reduces local government’s share of health care costs for employees.
States Roundup: Calif. Mental Health System Grapples With Controversy
A selection of health policy news from Ohio, California, Texas, Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Oregon.
