Devex: Top takeaways from Obama’s 2017 budget request
“…At the highest level, the budget request for international affairs looks pretty familiar and effectively flat, coming in at $54.1 billion overall. Of that amount, $22.7 billion sits in accounts fully or partially managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development. … President Obama made good on his State of the Union commitment to ask Congress for money to bring about the end of malaria with a 30 percent increase over last year’s level…” (Igoe, 2/10).

ScienceInsider: Budget 2017: Read our round up of Obama’s science funding requests
“ScienceInsider was following the numbers [Tuesday], as the White House rolled out its fiscal year 2017 budget request. Here are some dispatches from the front lines of the budget wars…” (2/9).

Washington Post: Budget breakdown: What the White House wants to spend money on
“President Obama released the final budget proposal of his presidency Tuesday, a $4.15 trillion tax and spending plan that would boost federal government spending by just under five percent. Here is a sampling of some key spending areas [including federal health agencies]…” (Sun et al., 2/9).

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The Hill: GOP skeptical of new funding for Zika
“…Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and other top health officials came to Capitol Hill to brief top senators in both parties on Zika and make the case for $1.8 billion in emergency funding. But Republican leaders leaving the briefing pointed to existing funds, including leftover money appropriated to fight Ebola, as being available for the Zika response. They did not rule out an emergency funding bill, however…” (Sullivan, 2/9).

WFMJ: Brown and other Senators introduce bi-partisan Zika virus legislation
“Following a second confirmed case of Zika virus in Ohio, several U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would add Zika to the FDA program that helps incentivize the development of new drugs and treatments for tropical diseases. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has joined Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) in introducing a bipartisan bill that would accelerate the development of a Zika vaccine…” (2/9).

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New York Times: Scientists Investigate How Viruses Like Zika Cause Birth Defects
“…Where birth defects are concerned, however, the Zika virus is far from unique. A number of other viruses, such as rubella and cytomegalovirus, pose a serious risk during pregnancy. Researchers have uncovered some important clues about how those pathogens injure fetuses — findings that are now helping to guide research into the potential link between Zika and microcephaly…” (Zimmer, 2/8).

New York Times: Study in Brazil Links Zika Virus to Eye Damage in Babies
“Infants infected with the Zika virus may be born not only with unusually small heads, but also with eye abnormalities that threaten vision, researchers reported on Tuesday in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology…” (Saint Louis, 2/9).

Reuters: U.S. to study Zika link to Guillain-Barre in Puerto Rico
“Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are heading to Puerto Rico this week to study whether the mosquito-borne Zika virus will cause an increase in cases of a rare neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barré syndrome as the outbreak intensifies in this U.S. territory…” (Steenhuysen, 2/9).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Nearly 100 nerve disorder cases linked to Zika in Colombia: health officials
“Nearly 100 Colombians suffering from the Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare nerve disorder, also have symptoms of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, Colombia’s National Health Institute has said…” (Moloney, 2/9).

Washington Post: Zika tied to major eye defects in babies with microcephaly, study finds
“…The findings, detailed Tuesday on the website of the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, provide the strongest evidence to date that the ­mosquito-borne virus is also linked to potentially threatening vision problems, researchers said…” (Sun, 2/9).

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Bloomberg Business: Sanofi’s Brandicourt Pushes for Speedy Zika Vaccine Development
“Sanofi Chief Executive Officer Olivier Brandicourt is pushing for speedy development of a Zika virus vaccine, building on the company’s success in bringing the first inoculation against dengue to market. Sanofi could start testing a vaccine candidate in people as early as next year, Brandicourt said during a press conference in Paris Tuesday…” (Torsoli, 2/9).

CNN: How and when will we get to a Zika vaccine?
“…Sanofi Pasteur said it hopes to use what it learned in those dengue trials to speed up their hunt for a Zika vaccine, but a ‘typical vaccine takes about 10 years to develop,’ said Nicholas Jackson, who heads up the effort. ‘We have a jump start here because we have experts in-house, technologies in-house; we have an infrastructure that we put in place around dengue vaccine we can tap into very quickly which will hopefully take off (time from) the typical timeline’…” (Christensen, 2/9).

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NPR: Zika In French Polynesia: It Struck Hard In 2013, Then Disappeared
“…French Polynesia’s brush with Zika underscores fears that the mosquito-borne virus could cause devastating neurological problems but it also offers insights into the disease — and hope that Zika can be contained… (Beaubien, 2/9).

Reuters: Zika, disease of the poor, may not change abortion in Brazil
“…With two-thirds of the population Catholic and support for Evangelicals growing fast, polls show Brazilians oppose changing the law. A survey by pollster VoxPopuli in 2010 showed that 82 percent reject decriminalization, while a Datafolha poll the same year put the figure at 72 percent…” (Eisenhammer, 2/10).

U.N. News Centre: Zika: U.N. agriculture agency provides expertise to help curb spread of virus
“Under the lead of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations system, including the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is mobilizing a coordinated response to Zika aimed at minimizing the threat in affected countries and reducing the risk of further international spread…” (2/9).

Wall Street Journal: New Zika Hot Spots Emerge in Venezuela and Colombia
“Health authorities say Zika is spreading quickly across Colombia and Venezuela, warning that the two countries’ porous border region could be the next hot spot after Brazil for the mosquito-borne virus…” (Kurmanaev/Muñoz, 2/9).

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The Guardian: Ban Ki-moon: ‘Close the gap between the world that is and the world that should be’
“…In a report setting out his vision for the World Humanitarian Summit in May, [U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] outlines five core responsibilities for the international community. As well as better political leadership, he demands protection for civilians, respect for humanitarian law, inclusive policies to make sure no one is left out, and more flexibility and joined-up thinking from the aid community…” (Chonghaile, 2/9).

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Devex: Family planning only part of ‘all-of-society’ SDG approach — UNFPA chief
“Family planning is crucial to the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, as a crosscutting issue that impacts targets on health, gender, youth, and more. In short, it cannot be isolated as a stand-alone problem simply because it encompasses all sectors of society, according to United Nations Undersecretary-General and U.N. Population Fund Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin…” (Jones, 2/10).

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Wall Street Journal: Ebola Still Takes Mental Toll on West Africa’s ‘Burial Boys’
“As Ebola fades, a mental health crisis is coming in its wake. At the height of the outbreak, West African countries that had no more than a roomful of doctors and too few nurses threw thousands of ordinary people — taxi drivers, accountants, and college students among them — onto the front lines. Now, many of the Ebola fighters are battling their own, quieter afflictions. Alcoholism, depression, and drug addiction are raging, health officials say, in countries that have even fewer psychiatrists than doctors…” (Hinshaw, 2/9).

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Associated Press: U.N.: Number of Haitians needing food aid spikes amid drought
“Drought-stricken Haiti is grappling with its most serious food crisis in 15 years as the number of people in need of urgent food aid has recently spiked, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme’s country office said Tuesday…” (McFadden, 2/9).

Miami Herald: Haiti faces worst food insecurity crisis since 2001
“…The U.N. agency, which is launching an $84 million appeal to help stave off extreme malnutrition and deaths in an already fragile Haiti, is blaming the emerging crisis on the El Niño weather phenomenon…” (Charles, 2/9).

New York Times: Haiti: Drought Worsens Food Crisis, U.N. Agency Says
“More than 1.5 million Haitians are threatened with malnutrition — double the number of six months ago … [WFP] also said that up to 70 percent of the crops in some areas of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, had been lost this past year. Wendy Bigham, the agency’s deputy director in Haiti, said that without rain for the 2016 spring season, many farmers would lose their fourth consecutive harvest…” (Gladstone, 2/9).

U.N. News Centre: Haiti: U.N. agency says weather and drought to blame as food insecurity doubles
“…In some areas of the country, up to 70 percent of the population is facing hunger and a recent study conducted by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the government of Haiti revealed that malnutrition rates are above emergency levels in several communes…” (2/9).

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Bloomberg Business: Zimbabwe Says It Will Require $1.6 Billion in Food Aid in 2016
“Zimbabwe will require $1.6 billion to combat hunger amid the country’s most severe drought in two decades that’s already left three million people without enough to eat, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa said…” (Marawanyika, 2/9).

International Business Times: Zimbabwe pleads for $1.5bn in food aid to prevent mass starvation
“…Government officials are appealing to local businesses and charities to help Harare combat brutal hunger across the nation. … Mnangagwa added that an appeal to international donors would also be made on 10 February…” (Sridharan, 2/10).

International Business Times: Zimbabwe: Mugabe urged to invest in agriculture to feed 2.5m starving people due to El Niño
“…The situation is especially critical in Zimbabwe where a declining economy and rising unemployment have made life hard for many people to access food, in the nation once dubbed the breadbasket of southern Africa. Zimbabwe has been a net importer of food since the early 2000s…” (Buchanan, 2/9).

Reuters: UNDP raises $60 mln for food aid in drought-hit Zimbabwe
“The United Nations Development Programme has raised $60 million for food aid in Zimbabwe and is feeding one million people as the country faces its worst drought in a quarter century, the agency’s local head said on Wednesday. The UNDP head of mission in Zimbabwe, Bishow Parajuli, said the U.N. plans to raise $130 million under an emergency fund…” (Dzirutwe, 2/10).

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Bloomberg Business: Ethiopia Needs $245 Million by March to Stop More Severe Hunger
“Ethiopia needs $245 million of food aid in the next three weeks to prevent a ‘potentially catastrophic escalation’ in chronic malnutrition cases from the end of April after a lack of rain left millions of people in danger of starvation, Save the Children said…” (Davison, 2/9).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Food aid to run out in Ethiopia unless donors step in, says charity
“… ‘The international community has just three weeks to provide $245 million in emergency food aid to help prevent a potentially catastrophic escalation in severe acute malnutrition (SAM) cases…’ [Save the Children] said in a statement…” (Migiro, 2/10).

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The Guardian: Madaya again facing starvation as report warns of extent of sieges
“The besieged Syrian town of Madaya is facing starvation again because meager supplies delivered last month are already running out, residents have said, as the United Nations was accused of severely underestimating the number of people suffering under blockades around the country. More than a million Syrian civilians are living in besieged towns and villages, according to the aid organization Siege Watch, more than double the number listed in U.N. data…” (Graham-Harrison/Shaheen, 2/9).

VICE News: ‘They Will Die There’: Video Shows Starvation Inside Madaya Clinic Run by a Vet
“After three years under siege, mass starvation, and relentless airstrikes, the people of Madaya didn’t think it could get much worse. Then their only doctor disappeared in the middle of the night. In the besieged Syrian town, which made international headlines in January when photos of its starving residents spread around the world, the only medical care facility, slightly euphemistically called the field hospital, is now run by two dentists, an agricultural engineer, and a vet…” (Callaghan, 2/9).

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VOA News: Thai Health Policy Seen as Model for Emerging Economies
“The president of the World Medical Association said Thailand’s universal health program is a model for other emerging economies in Asia, including India, in providing health services to low-income workers. There are growing tensions within the Thai health system amid pressures for co-payments to cope with rising costs…” (Corben, 2/9).

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NPR: Meet The Repo Man For Global Health: Skim Off A Grant, He’ll Make You Pay
“If you’re a government official, you don’t want to get a call from Cees Klumper’s office. … He’s the ‘Chief Risk Officer’ for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. … Klumper’s charge: to recover tens of millions of dollars that corrupt officials at some of those entities have stolen over the years…” (Aizenman, 2/9).

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SciDev.Net: Mapping trachoma to eradicate blindness
“…Until now, lack of data on trachoma-hit areas has meant health programs did not necessarily reach the most vulnerable. In the interactive visualization below, we explore the Global Trachoma Mapping Project (GTMP). Implemented in 2012, it is the largest global mapping of infectious disease ever…” (2/9).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Biggest ever infectious disease survey to speed end of trachoma
“…The scale and quality of the survey mean trachoma, an extremely painful disease which causes blindness, could be eliminated by 2020, according to the GTMP organizers — the World Health Organization, the Carter Center, and the international NGO Sightsavers. ‘We know where it is, we know how prevalent it is, so we know what to do,’ said Tom Millar, who co-led the project. ‘We’re very hopeful it can now be eliminated’…” (Whiting, 2/9).

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CNN: The snails spreading fever across Africa
“…The infection at hand is schistosomiasis — also known as bilharzia — a chronic infection caused by parasitic Schistomosa worms that can live inside blood vessels for years on end causing fever, chills, and inflammation in their wake. … The challenge in controlling the disease is that people often don’t develop symptoms for years, but can continue to transmit the infection…” (Senthilingam, 2/9).

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Huffington Post: The Zika Virus Is Hitting Poor Women The Hardest
Julie Delahanty, executive director of Oxfam Canada

“…The response of the international community [to the Zika virus] so far has been to tell women not to get pregnant. … Are you kidding me? It’s not as if many of them weren’t already trying to avoid pregnancy. The unmet need for family planning remains massive, with a huge portion of women wanting to avoid pregnancy unable to do so for want of family planning and other reproductive health services. … The impact will be hardest on poor women. Addressing women’s rights must become an urgent priority for our world, because until that happens, poor women will continue to bear the brunt of every global crisis that emerges” (2/9).

Huffington Post: Zika Outbreak Signals the Urgent Need for Strong Primary Health Care Systems
Suzanne Ehlers, president and CEO of PAI, and Simon Wright, head of child survival at Save the Children and board member of the Global Health Workforce Alliance

“…The Zika outbreak brings into sharp relief just how important primary health care systems are in identifying, preventing, treating, and managing infectious diseases. A young woman living in Recife … will rely first on the same community health workers or primary care nurses and physicians she has always trusted for care. … Unfortunately, despite the wide-ranging functions of primary health care — immunizations, family planning, diagnostics, antenatal care, maternity services, rehabilitation, counseling, and referrals — it is often underfunded and deprioritized, forcing people to use whatever cash they have for low-quality private services. The volatile Zika outbreak should remind health advocates and policymakers alike that investments in strong comprehensive primary health care systems is the very best precaution for such emergencies…” (2/9).

Wall Street Journal: Applying to Zika the Forgotten Lessons of Ebola
Scott Gottlieb, physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

“…[The global response to Zika] starts with mosquito control. But most of all, vaccines to abate these threats are essential. Government grants can’t sustain these efforts because the money is usually too modest to offset the costs and risks of drug development. … The widespread use of vaccines could eradicate many of these emerging threats. But the costs of such mass vaccination are prohibitive. … [T]he lesson of SARS, avian flu, swine flu, and Ebola is that political resolve and funding flourish after a threat has exploded — and shrivel once the immediate danger abates. An economic framework is needed to support these efforts before threats spiral out of control, and to sustain them long after the immediate risks subside” (2/9).

Forbes: Can Big Data Help Fight The Zika Virus?
Bernard Marr, Forbes contributor

“…There’s plenty of data — more than anyone could ever use. The challenge is identifying the right data and getting it in the hands of the right people who can design and implement solutions. From a technological standpoint, we already have everything we need to leverage big data to quickly and effectively develop vaccines for new viruses such as Zika. … Now what we need are platforms and systems to get this data into the hands of those who can develop solutions before a public health emergency develops” (2/10).

The Conversation: Why Africa can’t afford to have an outbreak of the Zika virus
Adamson S. Muula, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Malawi

“…There are several reasons Africa is least prepared to deal with an outbreak of the Zika virus. This includes the limited laboratory capacity and a lack of experts and funding. … Unlike in the U.S., there is not a unified body of health experts on the continent. … Until the African center for disease control is fully active, there is no comparable entity for Africa. The re-emergence of diseases such as Zika calls for African states and experts, as well as the international community, to join forces to build the continent’s disease response capacities” (2/9).

Los Angeles Times: Zika outbreak bears an eerie resemblance to the spread of Ebola
Yanbai Andrea Wang, fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School, and Michele Barry, director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford School of Medicine

“…These patterns [seen in the Ebola and Zika responses] — slow detection, sluggish response, and endangered vulnerable populations — will repeat themselves until we fix the forces driving them. … To build an effective global system for containing infectious diseases like Zika and Ebola, we need to make sure that countries around the world have the surveillance capacity to identify outbreaks before they spiral out of control. That means giving technical and financial assistance to developing countries and having external monitoring and incentives to make sure that capacity is built. … Without serious investment in global health systems, we will continue to face pandemics like Ebola and Zika and their devastating consequences” (2/9).

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New York Times: Letter to the Editor: Testing for Ebola
Ranus S. Dhillon, internist and health systems/policy specialist in developing countries; Devabhaktuni Srikrishna, founder of Patient Knowhow; and Robert F. Garry, professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University and member of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium

“…Rapid tests should have been used to screen patients [during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa], with all who test positive sent for confirmatory testing by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the conventional test for Ebola, to minimize the possibility of false positives. … [I]n one study, rapid tests did not miss a single patient with actual Ebola, and only about eight percent were false positives. Rapid tests would have been a game-changer during the peak of the epidemic and should now be used to screen patients” (2/9).

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New York Times: Leveraging Ebola to Tackle FGM
Liriel Higa, assistant to Nicholas Kristof and Charles Blow at the New York Times

“The outbreak of Ebola [in Guinea] … seems to have led to surprising progress in the movement to curb female genital mutilation [FGM] in the poor West African country. … Melinda Crowley, a foreign service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Conakry during the outbreak, says that Ebola gave Guineans a chance to reflect upon and criticize some of their cultural practices … Although cutting has been illegal under Guinean law for years, loopholes and a lack of enforcement rendered the ban utterly ineffective. However, the human rights forum, which took place just as the Ebola outbreak was starting, proved to be a turning point, Crowley says, kicking off a country-wide campaign to encourage a halt to FGM…” (2/9).

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Kaiser Family Foundation: White House Releases FY17 Budget Request
This budget summary highlights global health-related funding proposals contained in President Obama’s FY 2017 budget request released on Tuesday. In the request, “…funding for global health programs at USAID and the State Department … would total $8,577 million, which is $73 million above the FY 2016 enacted level. Malaria, maternal and child health (MCH), and family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) funding increased in the FY 2017 request compared to FY16, while funding for global health security, bilateral HIV, and the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria remained flat. Funding for tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), nutrition, and vulnerable children, however, all declined compared to FY 2016…” (2/9).

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U.S. Department of State: President’s FY 2017 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of State and USAID
This fact sheet discusses the president’s FY 2017 budget request for the U.S. Department of State and USAID, including the U.S. commitment to global health (2/9).

U.S. Department of State’s “DipNote”: Supporting America’s Presence Abroad Through the FY2017 Foreign Assistance Budget
Hari Sastry, director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources at the State Department, discusses the release of the president’s FY 2017 budget request, writing, “The total request for U.S. Department of State and USAID foreign assistance programming is $50.1 billion — less than one percent of the total.” Sastry also describes some of the initiatives the FY17 foreign assistance budget will fund (2/9).

White House: FACT SHEET: The President’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget: Overview
This fact sheet presents an overview of the president’s FY 2017 budget request, including the cancer ‘moonshot,’ NIH research, and the president’s development and democracy agenda (2/9).

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U.S. Global Leadership Coalition: International Affairs Budget Proposal Slightly Down: Growing Concern Over U.S. Ability to Keep Pace with Global Challenges
“The $54.1 billion for international affairs in the administration’s just-released budget proposal, while much improved from the draconian cuts in sequestration, may not be keeping pace with today’s increasing global challenges, says the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. In a full report just issued on the president’s budget request, the USGLC expressed concern on whether U.S. development and diplomacy programs will be able to meet the new and growing crises across the globe after suffering a 12 percent cut since FY 2010…” (2/9).

Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: PEPFAR, Global Fund flat in White House Budget document, while TB plan doesn’t get a mention
Rabita Aziz, policy research coordinator for the Center for Global Health Policy, discusses global health aspects of President Obama’s FY 2017 budget request released on Tuesday, writing, “The Obama administration raised hopes and goals for HIV treatment and prevention last year, but today released a budget with flat funding for the programs that must meet those goals…” (2/9).

Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: White House slashes TB funding less than two months after launching National Plan to Combat MDR-TB
Aziz discusses TB funding in the U.S. Department of State’s congressional budget justification, noting, “The State Department’s funding document released following the White House budget [Tuesday] shows the administration proposed the same amount for tuberculosis programs this year as it did last year — even after releasing an ambitious plan to reach more people worldwide with treatment for drug resistant TB…” (2/9).

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PolitiFact: Bono, HIV/AIDS and public opinion: Correcting the record
PolitiFact correspondent Jon Greenberg examines a recent comment by Bono in an interview with the Irish Times, in which he said, “People think AIDS is done — it’s not done.” Greenberg writes, “That last sentence caught our eye. Does the wider public believe the deadly virus is ‘done’ or anything approximating it?” He uses polling data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center, as well as an interview with Jen Kates, vice president and director of global health & HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, to gauge public opinion about the epidemic, concluding, “There’s an obvious bit of rhetorical flourish in Bono’s comments, but independent polling does show that the public sees AIDS as less of a threat both at home and overseas than it once did…” (2/9).

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IntraHealth International’s “Vital”: Zika Virus Sheds Light on Shortcomings in Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Corrine Mahoney, senior manager of communications and knowledge management at IntraHealth International, discusses the implications of the Zika virus on women’s rights and reproductive health, writing, “While no woman should be forced to use modern contraception due to a public health crisis, any woman who wants to heed the recommendations to delay pregnancy … should be given the means to do so. Now is the time to make exponential progress toward securing access to contraception as part of a comprehensive package of sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls who have gone far too long without it” (2/9).

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