Archives: Morning Breakouts

In this post on the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Global Health Policy" blog, Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and a research fellow at CGD, and Denizhan Duran, a research assistant in global health policy at CGD, describe a paper they wrote in which they try to determine "[w]hich donor provides the 'best' health aid, and why [this is] a relevant question." They write, "To be honest, one working paper later, we still do not have a definite answer to either question," but "we do know ... that health aid is relevant: effective health aid has saved lives, and technologies like oral rehydration salts and vaccination are among the most efficient development interventions money can buy." The authors say they "rank donors across four dimensions of aid effectiveness: maximizing efficiency, fostering institutions, reducing burden and transparency and learning," and invite readers to explore their data.

In a letter to Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, the founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure writes, "I made some mistakes."

The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "warned [Wednesday] that millions of people in South Sudan are facing worsening hunger and called for urgent action to improve food security through adequate food aid and projects to boost agricultural production," the U.N. News Centre reports (2/8). "[C]onflict, population displacement and high food prices" are threatening food security for 4.7 million in the new nation this year, up from 3.3 million in 2011, according to a report (.pdf) from the agencies, Reuters notes. "Of those, about one million people are severely food insecure, and that number could double if fighting continues and prices keep rising, the report said," the news agency writes (2/8).

Applauding the signing of the so-called "London Declaration on NTDs" by a consortium of public and private partners last week, Ned Breslin, CEO of Water For People, writes in this Huffington Post "Impact" opinion piece, "I am saddened by the emphasis on vaccines and medicines as the seemingly only vehicles to eradicate NTDs by London Declaration signatories. And I wonder where water, sanitation and hygiene are in this mix, as by all accounts it is not anywhere to be seen in the NTD eradication initiative."

In a White House briefing on Wednesday, "senior Administration officials announced a series of new initiatives to promote game-changing innovations to solve long-standing development challenges" in response to President Obama's "call to harness science technology, and innovation to spark global development," Gayle Smith, special assistant to the president, and Tom Kalil, senior adviser for science, technology, and innovation, write in this post in the White House Blog (2/8). "The new collaborations we're launching today will help save lives from hunger and disease, lift people from poverty and reaffirm America's enduring commitment to the dignity and potential of every human being," President Barack Obama said at the briefing, according to a White House press statement, which details several new public and private sector initiatives announced at the meeting (2/8).

This post in the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases' "End the Neglect" blog reports on an event held on Wednesday in London during which John Kufuor, former president of Ghana and winner of the 2011 World Food Prize, addressed the U.K. Parliament "about how school feeding programs can help millions of people currently living in poverty." According to the blog, "In coordination with [the Partnership for Child Development (PCD)] and Deworm the World, the Global Network shared information at the event about combining deworming efforts with school feeding programs in order to strengthen agriculture, health and education programs," noting, "Parasitic worm infections often undermine existing school feeding programs by causing malnutrition and anemia even in children who are well-fed" (2/9).

In this study published in Health Affairs this month, researchers investigated the concept known as "additionality," where donor nations and philanthropic organizations "require that funds provided for a specific health priority such as HIV should supplement domestic spending on that priority." Using data from Honduras, Rwanda, and Thailand, the authors found that "the three countries increased funding for HIV in response to increased donor funding" and "suggest that it would be preferable for donors and countries to agree on how best to use available domestic and external funds to improve population health, and to develop better means of tracking outcomes, than to try to develop more sophisticated methods to track additionality" (February 2012).

Inter Press Service reports on a cholera outbreak in Malawi's Nsanje and Chikhwawa districts, located on the southern border with Mozambique, noting that government officials have attributed the outbreak to declining sanitation conditions as a result of flooding in late January. According to IPS, "up to 550 pit latrines were washed away in Nsanje alone, a district hardest hit by the floods," and "[s]ewage from the latrines has contaminated water sources in the district, including boreholes and dug-out wells, thereby escalating the cholera incidents, according to the assistant Disaster Management Officer for Nsanje, Humphrey Magalasi."

"The health of millions of indigenous people across Asia is at risk, experts say, as lack of recognition of their legal status hinders data collection, making their medical problems invisible in most national health surveys," IRIN reports. "Indigenous peoples -- defined by the U.N. as people with ancestral ties to a geographical region who retain 'distinct characteristics' from other parts of the population -- rank disproportionately high in most indicators of poor health, according to the U.N. Secretariat Department of Economic and Social Affairs," the news service adds.