IRIN: President Trump’s humanitarian agenda
“Foreign policy, development, and humanitarian aid have had little coverage in the U.S. presidential campaign. However, the issues will still be in the in-tray of Donald J. Trump come January. Here are some of the most pressing: Syria, Iraq, and Yemen … The war in Afghanistan … Climate change … Refugees and immigration … Foreign aid … Extremism…” (11/9).

NPR: From AIDS To Zika: Trump On Global Health And Humanitarian Aid
“No one knows what the Trump administration has planned for U.S. foreign aid programs and other global initiatives that fight poverty and disease. There are some topics that Donald Trump has not addressed. Global advocacy groups such as the ONE Campaign have tried to get Trump to share his ideas of how to ‘tackle extreme poverty’ on the record. After a year of campaigning, he still hasn’t responded. But the president-elect has commented on a number of global issues. Here’s what he has said in speeches and interviews…” (Gharib, 11/9).

POLITICO: Trump victory provokes crises in foreign policy
“Donald Trump’s stunning election victory will provoke immediate tensions across several continents, and force Republican foreign policy elites to make quick decisions whether to work for a man most strongly opposed as unqualified, according to foreign policy experts and GOP insiders. The mere fact of Trump’s election will produce political instability in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, experts say, as world leaders scramble to prepare for potentially radical shifts in American foreign policy and brace for global financial panic…” (Crowley, 11/9).

Quartz: Under Donald Trump’s foreign policy, Africa will fall off the map
“President-elect Donald Trump isn’t particularly concerned with Africa: Over the course of his campaign, the continent was barely mentioned. But glimpses at Trump’s broader foreign policy suggest he’ll favor a mix of aggression and isolationism over increased global cooperation, and is very unlikely to be a champion of humanitarian aid. All of that is bad news for Africa…” (Chutel, 11/9).

ScienceInsider: Here’s some advice for you, President Trump, from scientists
“…[N]ow it’s time for scientists to share their thoughts with the business tycoon who triumphed over both Democrat Hillary Clinton and much of the Republican party he represented in the election. There’s been almost no interaction between the science community and the campaign over the past 18 months. Most academics didn’t support Trump and never expected him to beat Clinton. Trump operatives didn’t do any outreach to the scientific establishment, and its agenda wasn’t addressed during the campaign…” (Mervis, 11/9).

ScienceInsider: The U.S. election is over. Who will hold key science leadership jobs?
“…What will the election results mean for the leadership of the key agencies and congressional committees that shape U.S. science funding and policy? Here’s a quick guide to who is in, who is out, and who is not going anywhere…” (Malakoff, 11/9).

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PolitiFact: Most people clueless on U.S. foreign aid spending
“…In a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, [Secretary of State John] Kerry bemoaned a persistent misconception about how much money Washington sends overseas. ‘Do you know that amazing surveys show that many of our citizens think we devote a full quarter or even a third of our federal budget to foreign aid?’ Kerry said on Oct. 26, 2016. … There are different ways to tally expenses across more than a dozen agencies, but by and large, foreign aid represents about one percent of all spending. To support Kerry’s claim, the State Department press office pointed to several reports including a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a widely respected source of impartial data. … There’s nothing wrong about Kerry’s summary. We rate this claim True” (Greenberg, 11/9).

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U.N. News Centre: U.N. agency responding to severe health risks women and girls face amid Mosul military operation
“The United Nations estimates that 1.2 to 1.5 million people are currently being affected by the military operations underway to retake Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS or Da’esh), some quarter million of which are women who potentially need reproductive health services and care for gender-based violence…” (11/9).

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Reuters: Haiti launches massive cholera vaccination drive but worries remain
“Haiti has launched a massive cholera vaccination campaign to battle a flare-up after Hurricane Matthew, but concerns remain about the capacity for longer-term improvements to water and sanitation infrastructure needed to eradicate the disease…” (Brice, 11/9).

VOA News: Haiti Launches Ambitious Cholera Vaccination Campaign
“…The campaign, begun Tuesday, is expected to be the world’s largest, targeting 820,000 people. There have been around 3,500 suspected cases of the water-borne illness since the Category 4 storm tore across southwest Haiti last month…” (11/9).

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Agence France-Presse: ‘Zika can break out anywhere,’ warns Brazilian doctor
“The Brazilian doctor who first linked the Zika virus to brain damage in babies warns that rich countries are not safe from the disease, urging them to increase research funding. Obstetrician Adriana Melo was the first person to make the connection between an outbreak of Zika in Brazil and a surge in babies born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads…” (Neto, 11/9).

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Los Angeles Times: This boy could be one of the world’s last victims of polio
“…The narrow Sheltan valley [in Afghanistan], a haven for the Taliban and other insurgents along the border with Pakistan, is also one of the world’s last redoubts for the crippling childhood disease. There have been 32 polio cases worldwide this year — four in Nigeria, 16 in Pakistan, and 12 in Afghanistan. Of the Afghan cases, four … are from this half-a-square-mile cluster of farming villages, home to about 1,000 people. From 2012 until this summer, the threat of violence and the anti-Western policies of insurgents prevented health teams from entering the valley to vaccinate children, the only way to stop the virus’s spread…” (Bengali, 11/10).

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Nature: Big brain projects urged to aid public health
“Major brain-mapping projects have multiplied in recent years, as neuroscientists develop new technologies to decipher how the brain works. These initiatives focus on understanding the brain, but the World Health Organization (WHO) wants to ensure that they work to translate their early discoveries and technological advances into tests and treatments for brain disorders…” (Reardon, 11/8).

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Huffington Post: Zika’s Rapid Rise and the Limp Global Response Reveal Dire Global Health Challenges
Peter Katona, clinical professor of medicine in infectious diseases at UCLA

“…In addition to the routine clinical and public health considerations given to all harmful emerging infections, for Zika there are socioeconomic, psychological, and public policy issues that might actually predominate … Policy issues such as abortion; birth control; changing prior inattention to the science of vector-borne infections; travel and tourism implications; constantly changing federal guidelines; confusion with related chikungunya and dengue carried by the same mosquitoes; the possible augmenting role of sentinel events such as the Olympics and the Hajj; and appropriate timely funding from local, regional, national, and international sources — all … need to be addressed in a much more interconnected world. … There are too many unanswered clinical questions, many bizarre complications, an odd complex transmission pattern, delayed funding by a U.S. Congress playing political games, and a very slow international response by a poorly funded WHO emergency response team. There is a need to re-evaluate many social questions…” (11/4).

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The Guardian: Why are we ignoring the sexual health of women who have sex with women?
Tiffany Mugo, media consultant, writer, and co-founder of HolaAfrica!

“…[Women who have sex with women (WSW)] are often left out of the safe sex narrative, which means they are frequently excluded from the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda. In Africa, social and cultural obstacles — as well as government policies — make it extremely difficult for WSW to speak to health practitioners about sex, and to access dental dams and other means of safe sex. … The silence surrounding women who have sex with women leaves people vulnerable and at risk, and unable to fully realize their health and bodily rights. Queer women in Africa have a right to know how to stay healthy. WSW need to be a part of the sex and reproductive health and rights conversation. Despite not being as high risk as other groups, these women are still at risk, and to leave them out of the conversation is to ignore a widespread and persistent problem” (11/9).

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U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s “Impact 2016”: Donald Trump
USGLC’s Impact 2016 profiles President-elect Donald Trump’s stance on several foreign policy and humanitarian issues, including his previous comments on PEPFAR, national security, and corruption (November 2016).

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Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: Indicators measure progress towards providing family planning services at HIV clinics
In a guest post, Mary Freyder, M&E director of the Community Health and Behavioral Health Department at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and deputy team lead for Tulane’s partnership on the MEASURE Evaluation project, discusses a new manual providing indicators to track the integration of family planning and HIV service delivery. Freyder writes, “For each indicator listed, the manual provides detail on its purpose, a description, a definition of relevant terms, a method of measurement, and discusses data quality issues, and special considerations” (11/9).

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Center for Global Development’s “Global Health Policy Blog”: Maybe Tobacco Taxes Aren’t So Special After All
William Savedoff, senior fellow at CGD, highlights a recent CGD “roundtable discussion focused on the political economy of raising tobacco taxes in low- and middle-income countries, with special attention to successes (like the Philippines) and failures (like Vietnam).” Savedoff focuses on the conversation over tobacco taxes, concluding, “It is time for the major international financial institutions to give higher level attention to tobacco taxes as an important part of both the domestic revenue agenda and the health agenda” (11/4).

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Center for Global Development: Fiscal Policy, Inequality and the Poor in the Developing World — Working Paper 441
Nora Lustig, a non-resident fellow at CGD, discusses a CGD working paper on the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty in developing countries (11/8).

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