Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433 million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor," including "replac[ed] the government's lead negotiator for the deal" and "blocked other firms from competing," the newspaper adds.

In this post in the Huffington Post's "Impact" blog, Charles Lyons, president and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, responds to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech at the NIH last week in which she called for an "AIDS-free generation," writing, "As Secretary Clinton pointed out, we've never before had as many tools to get ahead of the disease as we do now," such as male circumcision and treatment as prevention, "[b]ut one of the cornerstones of her strategy to create an AIDS-free generation is a tool we've actually had in our arsenal for a long time: the ability to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV."

Toronto's Star reports on how problems within India's health care system -- such as absent doctors and nurses, a lack of necessary equipment, corruption and one of the lowest health budgets in the world -- has led to the mistrust of the public system and has paved the way for private medicine in the country. According to the newspaper, "In a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey in India, 79 percent said they opted for private doctors or traditional healers rather than government-run hospitals," and that "they spent an average seven percent of their monthly income on health care."

VOA News examines the Eugene Bell Foundation's work in North Korea to detect and treat patients with multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The foundation is treating about 600 patients in North Korea, where "[c]onditions ... are ideal for the spread of TB. The climate is cold. Most citizens live and work in small spaces, and lack proper nutrition to maintain a strong immune system," VOA writes (Herman, 11/11).