Rights Advocacy Not The Best Approach For Global Health “[T]he global campaign to equalise access to healthcare has had a surprising result: it has made global healthcare more unequal,” William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University and co-director of its Development Research Institute, writes in a Financial Times…

Reforms are required to curb global hunger, which was already “growing” before the worldwide financial downturn, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a report, released in Rome, ahead of World Food Day on Friday, the BBC reports.

Lancet Comment Examines Efforts To Subsidize ACTs A Lancet comment examines an Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) program to help countries procure subsidized artemisinin-based combination treatments (ACTs). The authors write though it is worth celebrating the recent advances in malaria prevention, “these successes cannot hide the fact that close…

During opening remarks of the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, former President Bill Clinton said, “[W]e have more attending this meeting than ever before,” Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal reports. “Despite record attendance and commitments made, Clinton addressed the reduction in global wealth upfront, urging leaders who have not yet identified which causes to support to instead support multi-year pledges already under way that have been restructured due to lack of funding,” according to the news service. After Clinton, President Barack Obama addressed the summit, “[f]ollowing” a theme that encouraged meeting participants to take action (Banjo, 9/22).

While legislators in Moscow attempt to reform the Russian health system in a way that is “strikingly similar” to the reform process in the U.S. and “[g]iven the importance of the U.S.-Russia relationship … our two countries have a historic opportunity to expand our health collaboration and, in so doing, improve our diplomatic ties,” Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) board of trustees, writes in a Foreign Policy opinion piece.

Local Drug Production Doesn’t Increase Access, Undermines Quality The international community focuses on lowering drug prices as a means of improving access and “today its idea is local pharmaceutical production … But while the German Government and other countries’ aid agencies are helping fund small firms in Africa, they have…

G20 finance ministers meeting in London next Friday, ahead of a G20 meeting in Pittsburgh “will face concerted pressure to introduce a tax on financial transactions as a coalition of anti-poverty campaigners aim to force the issue onto the agenda,” the Guardian reports.

Lancet Infectious Diseases Features Reflection On Use Of HIV/AIDS Money In Mozambique A Lancet Infectious Diseases Reflection and Reaction piece says while PEPFAR’s “investment of over US$228 million into Mozambique in 2008 alone” resulted in “an exponential increase in the number of people on” ARVs and boosted prevention programs, “[t]here is more money…

The Los Angeles Times examines how “activists in Washington, and Thailand and other developing countries are accusing the Obama administration of endangering access to affordable drugs to fight AIDS and other epidemic diseases.”

The New York Times Magazine, as part of a special issue that focuses on women worldwide, published an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who “staked her claim as an advocate for global women’s issues in 1995, when, as first lady, she gave an impassioned speech at a United Nations conference in Beijing.” The interview was conducted ahead of her 11-day seven country tour of Africa.