Archives: Morning Breakouts

Birth control is turning out to be a fundraising boon for abortion rights groups that support women congressional candidates, and one prominent Republican says his party needs to stop talking about the birth control debate.

This announcement, made Friday, is consistent with tradition. However, the court will make available same-day audio of the oral arguments because of "extraordinary public interest."

In a report published last week, the World Bank "called on African governments and international donors to increase efforts to prevent new HIV infections in order to control treatment costs," VOA News reports. "One of the report's co-authors, Markus Haacker, said countries facing the highest burden are often not those with the highest infection rate, but rather low-income countries that lack the resources to keep pace with each new infection," VOA notes.

Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security and environment, "is hoping bird flu studies currently in publishing limbo will be released by the time the agency hosts a second meeting on the controversy this summer," the Canadian Press/Winnipeg Free Press reports. "A major break in the impasse would be needed for that to happen," the Canadian Press writes, adding, "As things currently stand, revised versions of the two studies are due to be presented late this month to the U.S. biosecurity panel that earlier recommended against their full publication."

The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases' "End the Neglect" blog highlights "the first-ever international podoconiosis initiative, Footwork," launched on March 15. "Footwork is aimed at raising public awareness about the causes and impact of podoconiosis" -- a form of elephantiasis -- "in affected communities, and advocates for it to be included in global health and [neglected tropical disease] agendas," the blog writes, adding, "An estimated four million people in highland tropical Africa are affected with podoconiosis, and it has been confirmed in at least 15 countries in Africa, Central America and Asia" (Patel, 3/16).

"The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is warning that more than a million children below the age of five in the Sahel are facing a disaster amid the ongoing food crisis in the drought-prone region of Africa," the U.N. News Centre reports (3/16). "'More extreme conditions could see this number rise to about 1.5 million and the problem is that funding is not coming in at the rate that we need in order to prepare properly,' [UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado] said. 'So far we have received just one-fifth of the $119 million we have asked for in 2012,'" VOA News writes (3/16).

A new report, titled "Injection Drug Use in Ukraine" and published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), examines the challenges of providing HIV prevention and care services in the country, particularly to people who inject drugs (PWID), who accounted for "nearly 50 percent of new HIV infections registered in 2010," according to the CSIS website. Authors Phillip Nieburg, senior associate and co-chair of the Prevention Committee of the CSIS HIV/AIDS Task Force, and Lisa Carty, senior adviser in the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, also examine how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and PEPFAR could help Ukraine "in advancing HIV prevention and other services for PWID," the website notes (3/16).

As more bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, "common infections could become deadly, according to" WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who spoke on Wednesday at a conference titled "Combating Antimicrobial Resistance: Time for Action" in Copenhagen, ABC News reports. "'Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry,' said Chan. 'A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill,'" the news service notes (Moisse, 3/16).

The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) recently launched the Global Water Solidarity Platform "at the World Water Forum in Marseille, France, where 20,000 participants from the private, public and non-profit sectors [met] to address the water crisis," according to a UNDP press release. "The Global Water Solidarity Platform, which is supported by the governments of France and Switzerland, connects local authorities and organizations to take action to solve water and sanitation challenges, through which, for example, municipal water authorities in more developed countries can take direct action to support the improvement of water and sanitation services in developing contexts by contributing one percent of their revenue or budgets," the press release states (3/15).

Al Jazeera examines maternal mortality worldwide, saying, "If the situation continues at its current rate, the world will not meet" the U.N. Millennium Development Goal "to reduce maternal mortality by 75 percent between 1990 and 2015." Though the estimated number of women who die of maternal mortality has dropped from 546,000 in 1990 to 340,000 today, a woman's lifetime risk of dying during or following pregnancy in developing countries "is still high at one in 31," compared with one in 4,300 in developed countries, the news agency reports. "Attaining zero maternal death would require greater community involvement and commitment" and increased access to contraceptives and skilled birth attendants, according to experts, Al Jazeera notes (Arjunpuri, 3/19).

A preliminary report on the Uganda AIDS Indicator Survey, conducted by the Ministry of Health, shows the country's "HIV prevalence rate [has] stagnated over the last 10 years, [and] the number of people infected with HIV has risen from 1.8 million people to 2.3 million today," the Observer writes. "Health experts at the launch of the preliminary report said this is not only worrying for a poor country like Uganda, but also shows that the billions of dollars sunk into prevention are not reaping any results, as people continue to get infected," the newspaper writes.