Latest KFF Health News Stories
Bill Gates Arrives In Nigeria To Discuss Polio Eradication Efforts
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, arrived in Nigeria on Tuesday, where he held talks with government officials and traditional leaders to discuss polio eradication efforts in the country’s worst-hit northwestern region, Agence France-Presse reports (9/27). During the three-day trip, Gates, along with the foundation’s CEO, Jeff Raikes, will “follow up … on the Abuja Commitments to Polio Eradication, in which Nigerian federal and local government officials committed in 2009 to have at least 90 percent of children immunized against polio toward its eradication,” Daily Times Nigeria writes.
U.S. Aid Groups Criticize U.S. Government’s Response To Sending Food Donations To North Korea
“Several American aid groups are criticizing the U.S. government delay on deciding whether to resume large-scale food donations to North Korea” after recent flooding deteriorated health and food security in the country, VOA News reports. The five U.S.-based, non-governmental organizations “warn that if substantial aid is not permitted in the next six to nine months, many vulnerable people in the impoverished communist state could die from starvation,” the news service writes.
First Edition: September 28, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the costs of employer insurance plans and the final installment of KHN’s “Building Ambitions” series about children’s hospitals.
Rising Health Insurance Costs Shifted To Employees, Survey Finds
Family plan premiums averaged $15,073, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429. Workers paid an average of $921 toward the premium of single coverage and $4,129 for family plans. Read summaries from the today’s news coverage.
WHO Releases Global Survey Of Worst, Best Cities For Air Pollution
“Cities in Iran, India, Pakistan and the capital of Mongolia rank among the worst on the planet for air pollution, while those in the United States and Canada are among the best, according to the first global survey released Monday by the World Health Organization,” the Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle reports. “The list, which relies on country-reported data over the past several years, measures the levels of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers — so-called PM10s — for almost 1,100 cities,” the news service writes (9/27).
Humanitarian Aid ‘Stolen’ From U.S. Taxpayers Should Be Spent On Domestic Health Issues
In this New American opinion piece, Beverly Eakman, an author and former editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper in Houston, writes of humanitarian aid, “With the U.S. debt having surpassed 100 percent of gross domestic product August 3, to $14.58 trillion, it’s crudely entertaining to see how multimillionaire lawmakers in Congress and administrations both past and present find ‘compassionate’ ways to spend ever-more of taxpayers’ money,” asserting that “such expenditure is not specifically sanctioned by American taxpayers, and therefore constitutes theft by the U.S. government for what the State Department probably hopes will buy international good will.”
PRI’s ‘The World’ Interviews Member Of Delegation That Investigated Hunger In North Korea
PRI’s “The World” recently spoke with Matt Ellingson, director of Program Development at Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization, who was part of a mission to North Korea this month during which five U.S.-based, non-governmental organizations were allowed to send observers to the country to monitor delivery of aid to areas affected by severe floods this past summer. The group “came away concerned about widespread malnutrition and starvation in North Korea” and “is now calling for an urgent humanitarian intervention,” “The World” reports. The radio show provides audio of the interview and a link to a “factfile” on the North Korea food crisis published in The Telegraph earlier this month (9/23).
Vietnam Closes Kindergartens To Control Outbreak Of Hand, Foot And Mouth Disease
“More than a dozen kindergartens in Vietnam have closed to deal with an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed 111 children and sickened more than 57,000 this year, an official and the government said,” according to the Associated Press/Washington Post. The southern province of Hau Giang, which reported 70 percent of the recorded 57,055 cases and 90 percent of the 111 deaths in the country, “has had 361 cases since June, and some 50 children are hospitalized,” the AP reports. “The Health Ministry says more than 2,000 new cases of hand, foot and mouth disease are being reported each week. In a typical year, the virus infects up to 15,000 children in Vietnam and kills 20 to 30 of them,” the news agency writes (9/26).
GAVI To Purchase $1 Billion In Childhood Vaccines For Distribution In 37 Of The Poorest Nations
The Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, a fund backed by governments, the World Bank, the WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday that it will purchase more than $1 billion in vaccines against rotavirus, pneumococcal and other diseases through deals made with GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. to immunize children in 37 of the poorest nations, Bloomberg reports. “Wealthy nations donated $4.3 billion to purchase the vaccines as part of a plan to immunize 250 million children by 2015,” the news service notes (Bennett, 9/27).
Justice Dept. Decision Clears Path For High Court Health Law Ruling
The Obama administration announced Monday that it won’t press for an en banc appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Such an action would have delayed the legal process and likely pushed back the timing of a final Supreme Court decision until at least 2013.
USAID, NGO Partners Testing Nutritional Impact Assessment Tool
USAID is working with non-governmental organization partners to test a “nutritional impact assessment tool” that “‘would be a way for organizations designing or reviewing agricultural programs to mitigate any risks or potential negative effects on nutrition — in other words a “do no harm” approach,’ said Michael Zeilinger, head of the nutrition division with USAID’s office of health, infectious disease and nutrition,” IRIN reports. “‘As we start to design major agriculture programs around value chains and increasing production (such as Feed the Future and Global Agriculture and Food Security Program), we should really remember that there are some practices in agriculture that may have potential negative effects on nutrition, and this is just to make sure that they’re thought through,’ Zeilinger told IRIN.”
Perry, Romney Continue In GOP Primary Spotlight
News outlets report on the ongoing sparring between the two candidates and on Perry’s health policy record as Texas governor. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann points to her rivals’ positions on issues including health care and says Republicans should not settle for a moderate candidate. Also, NPR flashes back to GOP candidate Herman Cain’s 1994 debate performance. And, on the other side of the political spectrum, The Associated Press reports that Democrats are shifting their campaign message away from the health law and toward Medicare.
GlobalPost Interviews Reproductive Health Expert Frederick Sai
GlobalPost’s “Global Pulse” blog features an interview with Frederick Sai, a Ghanaian physician who is a member of Aspen’s Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health and a former president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and director of population at the World Bank. Sai addresses his interest in reproductive health, motivating leaders to talk about family planning, and how his experience as a medical doctor changed his views on family planning, according to the article (Donnelly, 9/26).
Survey Shows Rise In Unprotected Sex Among Youth, Raises Concern About Sex Education
“The number of young people having unprotected sex in the West has risen sharply over the past two years,” according to a global survey conducted by the International Planned Parenthood Federation between April and May of this year, Agence France-Presse reports. The study was funded by Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, the news agency notes (9/26). The survey, titled “Clueless or Clued Up: Your right to be informed about contraception,” prepared for World Contraception Day on September 26, “questioned more than 6,000 young people from 26 countries … on their attitudes toward sex and contraception” and “reports that the number of young people having unsafe sex with a new partner increased by 111 percent in France, 39 percent in the USA and 19 percent in Britain in the last three years,” Reuters notes (9/25).
Viewpoints: Lots Of Advice For Super Committee On Medicare, Medicaid
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the country.
Global Health ‘Blunders’ Can Lend Useful Lessons
New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman recounts his experience in the mid-1960s with a measles immunization campaign in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) during his time with the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC in a “Doctor’s World” perspective piece in the newspaper. Altman says that although the effort to expand the immunization campaign from a small field trial to a regional program “failed miserably,” the “lessons learned from these blunders led to a new program that wiped out smallpox, still the only human disease to have been eradicated from the planet.”
‘Urgent Action’ Needed To Prevent Resistance To Antiretroviral Therapy
“The clear pattern of increasing antiretroviral resistance in lower-income settings must be considered in the context of the worldwide HIV-control agenda,” especially because “the increasing rates of antiretroviral resistance in low-income settings represent a potential threat to the emerging treatment-as-prevention strategy,” Evan Wood and Julio Montaner of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS write in a Lancet Infectious Diseases opinion piece, adding, “Urgent action is needed.” They describe steps to help lower the threat of resistance, including deploying proven preventive strategies, “early and sustained” highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) to prevent vertical transmission, and programs to provide HAART to 15 million people worldwide by 2015.
