In the News
"Malaria is killing more people worldwide than previously thought, but the number of deaths has fallen rapidly as efforts to combat the disease have ramped up, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington" published in the Lancet on Thursday, an IHME press release reports. "More than 1.2 million people died from malaria worldwide in 2010, nearly twice the number found in the most recent comprehensive study of the disease," the press release states (2/2). The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, "used new data and new computer modeling to build a historical database for malaria between 1980 and 2010," BBC News notes (Bowdler, 2/2).
"IHME researchers say that deaths from malaria have been missed by previous studies because of the assumption that the disease mainly kills children under five," the press release states, and notes that the researchers found "more than 78,000 children aged five to 14, and more than 445,000 people ages 15 and older died from malaria in 2010, meaning that 42 percent of all malaria deaths were in people aged five and older" (2/2). A Lancet editorial accompanies the study. "We believe urgent technical and policy analyses must be initiated by WHO ... to review these new data and their implications for malaria control programs. This opportunity needs to be grasped with urgency and optimism," the editorial states (2/4).
Additional coverage of the study is available from ABC News, BBC News, GlobalPost, the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, the Guardian's "DataBlog," KLPU 88.5's "Humanosphere," the Los Angeles Times' "World Now," NPR's "Shots," and the Washington Post.
"Famine conditions have ended in war-torn Somalia six months after they were declared, but the situation remains dire with a third of the population needing emergency aid, the U.N. said on Friday," Agence France-Presse reports (Vincenot, 2/3). "'Long-awaited rains, coupled with substantial agricultural inputs and the humanitarian response deployed in the last six months, are the main reasons for this improvement,' the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Director-General José Graziano da Silva told journalists in Nairobi after visiting southern Somalia," Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C writes (2/3). "'We have three months, let's say, to work to avoid another possible famine from a drought. We cannot avoid the drought … but we can avoid famine from drought,' Graziano da Silva said, stressing the need for long-term measures to strengthen agricultural capacity," the Guardian reports (Chonghaile, 2/3).
"Nearly a third of the population -- some 2.34 million people -- still need emergency support, the Somalia Food Security Nutrition Analysis Unit said," BBC News notes (2/3). "The U.N. declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the anarchic Horn of Africa country," Reuters writes (2/3). "The famine was exacerbated by the Somali militant group al-Shabab, which has let few aid agencies into the area it controls in south-central Mogadishu," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports (2/3). "The famine was the worst in 60 years and killed tens of thousands of people," according to the VOA "Breaking News" blog (2/3).
Kenya has sufficient funds to support HIV/AIDS treatment programs through 2016, the head of the National AIDS Control Council (NACC) said in a statement on Wednesday after activists protested on Monday in support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Star reports. The Global Fund had to cancel Round 11 grants because "the cash at hand was not in the bank by the time we wanted to disburse," according to the Fund's Deputy Executive Director Debrework Zewdie, a move that sparked fears there would not be sufficient funding to pay for existing treatment programs, the Star notes (Muchangi, 2/2). In his statement, NACC head Alloys Orago said, "Though the available fund cushions beneficiaries from immediate effects of donor withdrawal up to 2016, such a move calls for home grown and innovative ways of locally financing the disease," according to the Daily Nation (2/2).
"[T]he highest levels ever of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) have been found in Russia and Moldova," the WHO reports in research published in the February edition of the WHO Bulletin, but "the agency didn't have data from most of Africa and India, where tuberculosis rates are much higher," the Associated Press/USA Today's "Your Life" reports. According to the AP, the "experts reported that about 29 percent of new TB patients in parts of Russia were drug-resistant" and that "65 percent of previously treated patients in Moldova had resistance problems." The news service notes, "Normally, less than five percent of TB cases are drug-resistant" (2/2).
"The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)," PlusNews reports. "'The problem is quite old in the DRC; the country has always been minimized by donors who have not seen it as a priority, mainly because HIV prevalence is relatively low at between three and four percent,' Thierry Dethier, advocacy manager for MSF Belgium in the DRC, told IRIN/PlusNews," and he added, "But look at the indicators: more than one million people are living with HIV, 350,000 of whom qualify for [antiretrovirals (ARVs)] but only 44,000 -- or 15 percent -- are on ARVs," the news service writes.
The news service cites "the end of six years of World Bank funding in 2011"; the end of UNITAID funding, which provides for pediatric and second-line ARVs, in December 2012; and "the cancellation of Round 11 funding by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria" as reasons for the ARV shortage in the DRC. "The Global Fund says it is reviewing a request for continued funding, and no life-saving programs will be cut as a result of funding shortages," but "Dethier noted that other donors would have to step up their funding," the news service writes (2/2).
Following the announcement on Monday that 13 pharmaceutical companies, several large non-profit organizations, governments, and U.N. agencies are joining forces to fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), Al Jazeera's "Inside Story" interviewed several experts in the field, asking, "Why have these diseases been neglected for so long? And how effective will the new plans be to counter these diseases and, in turn, alleviate poverty? Is the target date of 2020 set by the initiative realistic to wipe out some of the world's deadliest conditions? And what is in it for them?" according to the show's summary. Host James Bays discusses these and other issues with guests Tido Von Schoen-Angerer, director of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Access Campaign; Lorenzo Savioli, director of the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases at the WHO; and Mario Ottiglio, associate director of Global Health Policy and Public Affairs at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (2/1).
AllAfrica.com examines efforts by African researchers to develop a female-controlled HIV prevention method, writing, "[S]cientists searching for a gel or vaccine that can prevent HIV infection ride a rollercoaster of hope and disappointment." The article profiles efforts by researchers from the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (Caprisa) to find a microbicide gel to protect women from HIV infection.
In a study announced at the 2010 International AIDS Conference, a tenofovir vaginal gel "was able to reduce sexual transmission of the virus by 39 percent overall and 54 percent in women who used it consistently," the news service notes. "But the euphoria over this breakthrough has dissolved into disappointment," with the November 2011 suspension of another study, the Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (Voice) trial, in which the gel was used daily but was shown not to reduce the risk of HIV infection, the news service writes. According to allAfrica.com, "another trial is underway: the Facts study (Follow-on African Consortium for Tenofovir Studies), funded by the South African government, USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" (Frederickse et al., 2/2).
Editorials & Opinions
"If a Republican becomes president, ... say goodbye to international programs providing birth control to women in desperately poor countries such as Liberia," senior contributing writer Michelle Goldberg writes in this Daily Beast opinion piece. Goldberg notes that birth control has become a "significant issue in the U.S. presidential campaign," writing, "All of the Republican candidates have slammed the administration's refusal to give religious institutions a broad exemption from the mandate that insurance cover family planning."
"[W]hatever effect the upcoming election has on the reproductive health of American women, the effect on women worldwide is likely to be even greater," she writes. "If [Republican candidate Mitt Romney] is willing to scrap the only federal program to provide birth control to low-income women in the United States, programs to do the same thing abroad certainly aren't safe," Goldberg says, using Liberia, where she recently visited, as an example. "If Romney is willing to slash American funding for HIV/AIDS, which has significant Christian conservative support, it seems likely he'd be willing to do the same for USAID's family planning programs, which don't," she writes, adding, "USAID remains the world's largest source of birth control for poor countries -- a role it played even under [former President George W.] Bush. If that changes, as Liberia shows, the consequences for the world's most vulnerable women will be horrific" (2/3).
Recent Releases
More than "50 food security officials from 30 countries, and international and regional organizations" are meeting at the State Department in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss the L'Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security, which was endorsed at the 2009 G8 Summit and "mark[ed] a turning point for international efforts to achieve sustainable global food security," according to a State Department media note. Participants "will discuss coordination efforts between partner and donor governments; investments in research to improve food security; tracking progress toward meeting the L'Aquila commitments; and using Managing for Development Results to enhance the impact of investments in food security," the media note states (2/2).
This post in KPLU 88.5's "Humanosphere" blog examines how former President Jimmy Carter gave the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) "a good first shove nearly 30 years ago," writing, "Neglected diseases like river blindness, Guinea worm, parasitic (lymphatic) elephantiasis and schistosomiasis have been in Carter's cross hairs since the mid-1980s." The blog adds, "Few would argue that it has been primarily the work of the Carter Center, carrying on the work of the CDC and others, that has brought the horrible parasitic disease Guinea worm so close to eradication today -- from millions of cases in the 1980s down to a little more than a 1,000 last year." The blog also discusses how William Foege, a former CDC official who is responsible for the smallpox vaccination strategy that helped wipe out the disease, was instrumental in bringing Carter and the Gates family into global health (Paulson, 2/1).
