Archives: Morning Breakouts

The announcement at the end of January of the largest coordinated effort to fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) provides "more reason to hope that we may soon see a future free of these diseases," Adetokunbo Lucas, former director of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, writes in a Daily Monitor opinion piece. "This new coordinated action will take these previous efforts to a whole new level," he writes, adding, "Together, these partners have pledged to increase the supply of existing drugs and invest and collaborate on research to accelerate the development of new and better drugs."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed a vote on the birth-control requirement while White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said the compromise is the "right approach."

The Conference of Catholic Bishops said they have "grave moral concerns." The administration says they never expected an endorsement from the bishops.

Two prominent state attorneys general examined the health law case before the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that some senators are pushing to get television cameras in the Supreme Court.

Rick Santorum uses the issue to try to rally the conservative base, while some Democratic strategists call the White House's embrace of contraceptive coverage a political plus with young, female voters.

In this post in the ONE blog, Brooks Keene, policy adviser for CARE's water team, "makes the argument that foreign aid should benefit the poor first and foremost," noting, "As we approach World Water Day on March 22, CARE, [the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)] and WaterAid have published a report card [.pdf] on how well" the Water for the Poor Act, passed by Congress in 2005, "has been implemented seven years down the line." She writes, "In the absence of a strategy, USAID has gone ahead with water, sanitation and hygiene programs, but much of the effort and dollars have not gone to benefit the poor." She concludes by recommending several steps USAID could take "to spur concerted targeting" (2/9).

"Amidst pro-democracy protests, the Russian authorities have taken what is an ongoing assault on HIV prevention to the next level by moving to silence public health advocates whose only infraction has been to spread lifesaving information online and to criticize the government for its own failures," Eka Iakobishvili, a human rights analyst at Harm Reduction International, and Claudia Stoicescu, an analyst on Harm Reduction International's public health research team, write in this Huffington Post opinion piece. "While Prime Minister Putin spoke glowingly of digital democracy" in a recent column praising the potential for "internet-based democracy," "his anti-drugs agency is censoring websites for writing about WHO essential medicine," the authors note.

As efforts to implement the health law move forward, Politico Pro talks to Michael Leavitt about state exchanges, and KHN examines the administration's strategy for prevention funding.