Latest KFF Health News Stories
Canada Supreme Court Rules Vancouver’s Safe Drug-Injection Site Can Stay Open
“Vancouver’s Insite clinic, the only such safe-injection site for [people who use drugs] in North America, can stay open, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday in a landmark defeat for the federal government,” Reuters reports. “The country’s top court … ruled unanimously that closing the site would threaten the lives of drug users and therefore violate their human rights,” the news agency writes (Ljunggren, 9/30).
State Roundup: Calif. Insurer Drops Coverage Of Breast Cancer Drug
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
IOM Essential Benefits Report Expected Later This Week
The report will offer the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations regarding how the health law’s essential benefits package should be determined. In other health law news, federal regulators also must decide whether family planning should be included as a preventive care benefit. Religious groups say the “carve-out” exemption included in the draft regulations is too narrow.
Senate Republicans Doubt Prospects For ‘Grand Bargain’
Meanwhile, USA Today reports on five ways that congressional budgeters could trim Medicare.
IPS Examines The Practice Of Breast Ironing In Cameroon
Inter Press Service reports on the practice of breast ironing in Cameroon, a custom carried out by one-quarter of mothers in the country that is meant to reverse female sexual development in an effort “to avoid sexual contact between young girls and boys.” The news service writes, “An estimated one in four girls suffers from the practice in their childhood. Breast ironing is a traditional ritual in which, by using heated and flat objects, a girl’s growing breasts are pressed in order to suppress and reverse their development.”
Despite Increase In Health Care Spending In Angola, Quality Of Care Remains Low
“Angola has tripled its spending on health care since 2006, but for the vast majority of Angolans who can’t afford sparkling new private clinics — or better yet, care abroad — a trip to the hospital is still a nightmare,” Agence France-Presse reports. “Despite its oil wealth, in 2006 Angola ranked ninth from the bottom in the world on health spending, which accounted for just 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Since then, spending per person has tripled from $64 to $204, according to World Health Organization data,” according to AFP.
First Edition: October 3, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports previewing how health policy issues will fit into the Supreme Court’s new term.
Supreme Court’s Decision On Health Law Likely To Affect 2012 Election
News outlets examine what is likely to be the high court’s biggest case of the new term, which begins Monday.
Uganda Cannot Achieve Development Without Increased Investment In Maternal Health
In this Daily Monitor opinion piece, Anthony Masake of the Uganda Law Society stresses the importance of addressing maternal mortality in Uganda and asserts that the country cannot achieve development without increased efforts to meet national maternal health targets. He places emphasis on the need to invest in midwifery and nursing services, among other strategies, writing, “Within the context of inadequate financial resources, mounting health demands, escalating health care costs, rising population, and heightened public expectations, midwifery and nursing services present a platform from which we can scale-up health interventions to assist in meeting national health targets.”
Abortions In Africa Increased During ‘Global Gag Rule,’ Stanford University Study Shows
“In the first study to examine” the effects of a U.S. policy prohibiting foreign aid from going to any organization that performs abortions or provides information about or referral for the procedure as a method of family planning (often called the “Global Gag Rule” or “Mexico City Policy”), Stanford researchers Eran Bendavid and Grant Miller found that “the number of abortions increased in African countries where U.S. support for NGOs was cut the most,” according to a Stanford University news release (Gorlick, 9/28).
Time To Increase Efforts Against HIV/AIDS, TB
In a Huffington Post opinion piece, Kolleen Bouchane, director of ACTION, asks whether President Barack Obama will “heed Archbishop [Desmond] Tutu’s call to action” in a recent Washington Post opinion piece “and do his part to end AIDS.” She says, “While campaigning, President Obama promised to expand PEPFAR ‘by $1 billion a year in new money over the next five years’ and provide $50 billion by 2013 to fight HIV/AIDS worldwide. We are not on track to see even those promises become reality. We are not on track for the leadership to change the course of HIV and AIDS that Tutu has called for.”
In this Washington Times opinion piece, Chai Ling, president of the non-profit group All Girls Allowed and author of “A Heart for Freedom,” examines the issue of abortions performed on single women in China in relation to the country’s family planning policy, which in most provinces requires couples to be married to obtain a birth permit, without which they are not permitted to have a child. She writes, “Though the problem of skyrocketing abortion rates among single Chinese women has been highlighted by the media and attributed to a lack of sex education, no one has connected the problem to this tragic equation: no marriage certificate, no birth permit. No birth permit, no baby. Millions of unmarried women in China get pregnant, but none is allowed to give birth to her baby.”
Both Sides In Health Law Legal Clashes Seek Fast Action
News outlets examine the latest developments related to the challenges to the health law and handicap some of the possible outcomes.
Five Reasons To Support The Global Fund
Based on a report released last week by a high-level independent review panel on fiduciary controls and oversight mechanisms at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, “[t]he changes needed at the Fund are clearly substantial,” according to a Lancet editorial. “However, as the report notes, there is ‘nothing that cannot be fixed by appropriate reform.’ Whether governments in this era of austerity will stick by the Fund as it evolves is now a major concern. But there are good reasons for donors to keep funding the Global Fund,” the editorial states.
Funding For Health Law Is Again On GOP Chopping Block
House Republicans released a draft 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill on Thursday. The measure, which is currently deadlocked in committee, would block funds necessary to continue implementing the 2010 health law.
Nearly half of patients diagnosed with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) at a Chinese hospital had not had the disease before, showing “‘substantial’ transmission of the deadly superbug,” according to a study conducted by researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Bloomberg reports.
In a meeting at the presidential villa on Thursday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “that he was determined to eradicate polio within two years after the crippling disease re-emerged earlier this year,” Agence France-Presse reports. “Some 36 powerful Nigerian state governors Thursday signed a statement re-confirming their February 2009 commitment to … reach at least 90 percent of children with polio vaccine with the goal of wiping out polio from the country,” the news agency writes. According to AFP, Gates, who on Thursday completed a three-day trip to the country, “expressed confidence that polio can be stopped in Nigeria and commended the country’s leaders for redoubling their resolve to help finish polio once and for all, the foundation said in a statement” (9/29).
Dengue Fever Outbreak Overwhelms Northeastern Kenyan Town; WHO Sends Essential Drugs
“An outbreak of dengue fever in Mandera, northeastern Kenya, is spreading fast, with at least 5,000 people infected within weeks, due to limited health facilities, a shortage of medical personnel and poor sanitation, officials told IRIN.” The news service writes, “A statement by the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation on 26 September said four deaths from the disease had been confirmed but, according to Mandera residents, at least 10 people have died since early September when the outbreak started.”
