Archives: Morning Breakouts

The candidates traded barbs about the individual mandate to buy insurance and what they would do about the health law.

The plan would cut $21 billion in health law funding and $16 billion in hospital payments.

The KHN blog Capsules reports that the $5 billion fund that helped cover health insurance for more than 5 million people will stop taking claims for expenses incurred after Dec. 31 because it is running out of money.

Science examines recent successes in clinical trials in the HIV prevention field, limitations to mathematical models resulting from these trials, and funding issues facing campaigns to ramp up HIV prevention interventions. "[M]odels now suggest that combining [prevention strategies] might virtually stop HIV's spread," but "there's a vast difference between a study having success and thwarting HIV in the real world," according to Science. "Models only point out routes to ending AIDS, and many will surely differ," the magazine writes, concluding, "But for the first time since AIDS surfaced 31 years ago, many researchers believe the destination itself is no longer a mirage" (Cohen, 12/9).

In this Toronto Star opinion piece, Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and Nicci Stein, executive director of the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development, discuss how progress made in the fight against HIV/AIDS over the last 30 years "is in peril, due to governments reneging on repeated promises to fund the fight against the pandemic."

"[S]topping the AIDS pandemic requires sustained engagement from both donor and developing countries, political commitments that are backed by dollars. ... Yet many donor countries have chosen precisely this moment to abandon their promises," they write. They discuss the cancellation of Round 11 grants by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and ask the Canadian government to deliver on its HIV/AIDS funding pledges. Elliott and Stein conclude, "We can turn the tide on the spread of HIV -- victory has never been closer. But we need to make sure that those with the power and the money use it toward achieving the goal of an end to AIDS" (12/7).

"The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), through its partnership with the Millennium Challenge Account-Lesotho, is helping Lesotho address key challenges in its health sector through a $122 million investment in health infrastructure and health systems," IIP Digital reports. "More than 720,000 Basotho are expected to benefit from the MCC health project over the next 20 years," the news service writes.

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and under-secretary-general of the U.N., answers questions about his work from Forbes contributor Rahim Kanani in this interview excerpt. Osotimehin "discussed current trends in population growth, innovative approaches to tackling HIV/AIDS, leadership lessons in public health, challenges to safeguarding maternal health while encouraging family planning, and much more," according to Forbes (12/8).

Some women in African nations are "dangerously confused about the best nutritional path to protect their children from contracting [HIV]," a new report, based on research by community health workers from Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, shows, PlusNews reports. Though the most recent WHO guidelines (.pdf) on infant-feeding options for HIV-positive mothers in Africa have been adopted in many countries, the recommendation that infants be exclusively breastfed for their first six months has not reached local health care workers or policymakers, according to the report, which was launched this week at the 16th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The report also "found that prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs were focused too narrowly on the provision of [antiretrovirals (ARVs)] to HIV-positive pregnant women, rather than more comprehensive approaches that involved family planning, maternal health care and exclusive breastfeeding," according to the news service (12/9).

An FDA panel decided Thursday that two popular birth control pills should come with stronger warning labels about the possibility of blood clots.

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry releases a new TV spot bashing frontrunner Newt Gingrich and rival Mitt Romney for supporting health care policies similar to those of President Obama, while Newark Mayor Cory Booker focuses on the health law's benefits for young people as he campaigns for the president in New Hampshire.