Devex: USAID administrator shares view on development finance legislation
“With senators continuing to discuss legislation that would create a new United States development finance institution, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green has weighed in for the first time. Green told Devex that he has long believed in the importance of a development finance institution, but that ‘our focus continues to be making sure that it’s not simply about the money, that it is about sound development outcomes. There are tremendous development needs and opportunities in the world. So the most important thing is figuring out how we apply resources that are available to meet those outcomes’…” (Saldinger, 6/25).

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Devex: Q&A: ‘Global gag rule’ hits Kenya’s largest reproductive health organization
“This month, Family Health Options Kenya shuttered its clinic in Kitengela, Kenya. … Devex spoke with Amos Simpano, director of clinical services at FHOK, about the Kitengela clinic closing and the impact the ‘global gag rule’ has had on the organization’s ability to provide reproductive services in Kenya…” (Jerving, 6/25).

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The Atlantic: How Will Trump Lead During the Next Global Pandemic?
“The next global epidemic is likely around the corner — and no amount of U.S. retrenchment from globalization will halt that outbreak at the U.S. border. ‘There is a real reason for us to be scared of the idea of facing this threat with Donald Trump in the White House,’ said Ron Klain, who served as President Obama’s Ebola czar, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is cohosted by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. … ‘We need leadership that is focused, that is pro-science, that doesn’t traffic in conspiracies, that invests in these things,’ Klain said. Leadership ‘that doesn’t have these isolationist attitudes, [which] … put us all at risk.’ Klain identified several large gaps in U.S. preparedness for the next global outbreak…” (Calamur, 6/23).

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Devex: Gates Foundation and USAID team up to bring design to health
“The United States Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have joined forces to encourage more global health practitioners to build their programs around the wants and needs of the people they aim to serve. Over the weekend, at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival held in Aspen, Colorado, representatives of the U.S. donor agency and the world’s largest foundation launched a set of resources called ‘Design for Health’…” (Cheney, 6/25).

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Brown Political Review: A New First Author? China’s Science and Health Diplomacy
“…Global health and science have political practicality outside of security as well in the form of increasing soft power in other nations. The current trends in typology and amount of U.S. global health and science, however, suggest the U.S. is neglecting to utilize its health and science superiority to expand influence. By contrast, China has made increasingly rapid gains in health and science within the last fifteen years, also enacting policies that augment the power projection abilities of health and science…” (Joyce, 6/25).

Xinhua News: U.N. officials hail China’s progress on HIV/AIDS prevention
“With its strong leadership, innovation, and partnership, China has made huge progress in fighting AIDS, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé said during his visit to China. As an advocate of the vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths, Sidibé hailed China’s efforts in boosting the accessibility of anti-AIDS drugs and medical treatment in recent years at his meeting with China’s UNAIDS branch and partners Wednesday…” (6/22).

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Thomson Reuters Foundation: “Sea change” needed to achieve goal of ending child marriage by 2030
“A ‘sea change’ is needed to achieve a global goal of ending child marriage by 2030, campaigners said ahead of a major meeting on Monday aimed at stopping the practice. Some 12 million girls a year are married before the age of 18 with often devastating consequences for their health and education, and ending the practice by 2030 is among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals…” (Yi, 6/24).

U.N. News: Women’s rights face global pushback from conservatism, fundamentalism — U.N. experts warn
“Women’s rights are under threat from a ‘backlash’ of conservatism and fundamentalism around the world, a United Nation panel warned on Friday. ‘Alarming pushbacks have been progressing across regions of the globe,’ through what the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice described as ‘alliance of conservative political ideologies and religious fundamentalisms,’ in its report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. ‘Practices such as polygamy, child marriage, female genital mutilation, so-called honor killings, and criminalizing women for sexual and reproductive behavior, have no place in any society,’ said a statement from the working group, adding that ‘there is no acceptable justification for waiting for the elimination of discrimination against women’…” (6/22).

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The Guardian: Scientists aim to stop the devastation of Zika-like pandemics
“…[A] group of scientists … [has] launched a remarkable new project which aims to spot the next pandemic virus. The international initiative is known as the Global Virome Project (GVP) and it aims to pinpoint the causes of fatal new diseases before they start to make people ill. … A pilot study, known as Predict and backed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has already pinpointed more than a thousand viruses in animals that have the potential to infect humans…” (McKie, 6/24).

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Scientific American: How Ebola Vaccines Have Helped to Usher In a New Era in the Outbreak Response
“…At home in Guinea, [physician Alhassane Touré] had headed up a very successful Ebola vaccine effort three years earlier, helping to deploy an experimental shot after the West African crisis had already gripped the region. But this time around [in the Democratic Republic of Congo], his team had access not just to the experimental vaccine, but also to financial support that would allow them to offer the inoculation near the start of an Ebola outbreak — and try to contain it relatively early…” (Maron, 6/23).

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Al Jazeera: Nigeria runs low on snakebite antidote (6/24).

Associated Press: Non-invasive malaria test wins Africa engineering prize (Muhumuza, 6/24).

The Guardian: ‘This scheme is a lifesaver’: India’s drive to provide cheap drugs (Dhillon, 6/25).

Newsweek: Engineered Mosquitos Backed by Bill and Melinda Gates to Wipe Out Malaria (Hetherington, 6/22).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Governments must crack down on organ trafficking: expert (Win, 6/22).

VICE News: Here’s how the DRC fought off an Ebola outbreak (Singh, 6/24).

Washington Post: ‘Everything was destroyed’: Monsoon begins to take deadly toll on Rohingya camps in Bangladesh (Doshi, 6/24).

Xinhua News: Brazil develops GM mosquitoes with defective sperm to combat Zika (6/22).

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SciDev.Net: The world needs to create a ‘new normal’ on gender
Ben Deighton, managing editor of SciDev.Net

“…The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report, which looks at how close countries are getting to equality between men and women, points out that many countries actually slipped back last year in their Global Gender Gap Index, which measures differences between men and women across health, education, economy, and politics. It means that, on a global scale, 2017 was worse than 2016. It’s the first time the index has slipped since they started measuring the gender gap in this way over a decade ago. … The world needs to work together to create a ‘new normal,’ where woman and men are on an equal footing. At SciDev.Net, we’ve launched a series of articles called Role Models, which seek to hold up successful women in science. We interview women at the top of their fields to find out about the science they are doing, expose the hurdles they had to overcome to get there, and highlight their ideas about getting closer to the goal of gender equality…” (6/25).

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Thomson Reuters Foundation: U.S. policy traps women in poverty, and the world is watching
Risa Kaufman, director of U.S. human rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights

“The fact that 40 million people live in poverty in one of the richest nations in the world is a tragedy and a disgrace. A United Nations report delivered on Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council makes clear that it also undermines fundamental human rights, with particularly harsh impacts on women. In short, basic health care is the foundation for reproductive health, and poverty represents a direct barrier to health care for those in the U.S. who cannot afford to pay for it. … The Special Rapporteur’s report makes clear the vast inequality and hardship that millions of people living in poverty face daily in the United States. It also makes clear that the government has an obligation to address these hardships and disparities. Health care, including access to reproductive health care, is a human right. Realization of the right, through law and policy, will enable all to live in dignity and equality, and to determine their futures” (6/22).

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BMJ Opinion: The long-lasting damage of Trump’s family separation and child detention policy
Kathryn Hampton, network program officer, and Homer Venters, director of programs, both at Physicians for Human Rights, discuss the Trump administration’s immigration family separation policies, writing, “The man-made crisis of family separation and child detention demands that we use our scientific knowledge and stature to tell the truth about how this policy is causing harm. … The long-lasting damage caused by family separation and child detention isn’t limited to children, or even to their families. It causes harm to all of us who come to accept this practice in the form of dehumanization and loss of empathy…” (6/22).

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PLOS Blogs’ “Global Health”: Antimicrobials & international law: Join the resistance!
Susan Rogers Van Katwyk, managing research fellow of the Global Strategy Lab, and Steven J. Hoffman, director of the Global Strategy Lab, a professor in the faculty of health, political science, and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, and the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Population & Public Health, discuss international legal action to address antimicrobial resistance. The authors write, “We believe that an international legal agreement would be the most effective, fair and sustainable way to achieve the necessary level of global interlocking actions to address access, conservation, and innovation of antimicrobials…” (6/22).

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IDSA’s “Science Speaks”: Software helps prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission
In this guest post, Cristina de la Torre of MEASURE Evaluation discusses the use of DHIS 2 software to “monitor referrals and linkages across health services,” particularly for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission. De la Torre notes additional information is available in MEASURE’s guidance document (Barton, 6/22).

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FT Health: Turkey and humanitarian aid; gambling; influenza
The latest issue of the Financial Times’ weekly global health newsletter highlights findings from the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report compiled by Development Initiatives and provides a round-up of global health-related news stories (6/22).

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U.S. Department of State’s “DipNote”: Sowing Hope for the Women of Rwanda
Heather Eaton, public affairs officer for the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Agencies in Rome, discusses a recent media reporting tour to Rwanda examining food security, nutrition, and livelihood projects supported by the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and USAID. Eaton highlights one program in particular and its impact on local women (6/22).

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