Foreign Policy: Inside Trump’s Plan to Scale Back U.N. Resolutions on Sexual Health, Violence Against Women
“…New State Department directives, outlined in internal memos obtained by Foreign Policy, show how the Trump administration is instructing U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to push back on U.N. resolutions on women’s issues, outlining so-called red lines on language related to sexual health and sexual harassment. … One of the memos obtained by FP says the United States can no longer use the phrases ‘sexual and reproductive health’ or ‘comprehensive sexuality education,’ saying such terms promote abortions and normalize sexual activity for young people…” (Gramer/Lynch, 10/30).

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CBS News: CDC Director Robert Redfield says pandemic flu is “very possible”
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is keeping a close watch on the flu after the highest number of deaths from the virus last year since modern tracking began. It’s been 100 years since the devastating Spanish flu pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide. In an interview with ‘CBS This Morning’ co-host John Dickerson, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said one of his greatest fears today is another pandemic, which he says is ‘very possible’…” (10/30).

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The Hill: State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert under consideration to replace Haley at U.N.: report
“State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert is under consideration to replace Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, according to a new report. Two sources familiar with the selection process told Fox News that Nauert is a ‘leading contender’ for the position…” (Keller, 10/30).

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STAT: FDA says it will consider approval of first dengue vaccine, despite controversy
“The Food and Drug Administration has agreed to consider Sanofi Pasteur’s application for Dengvaxia, the world’s first licensed vaccine that protects against dengue but one that brings with it considerable controversy and concern. The company announced Tuesday that it has received notice the regulatory agency will give the vaccine’s file a priority review, which means a decision must be rendered within six months…” (Branswell, 10/30).

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Associated Press: U.N. demands immediate halt to attacks in Ebola areas in Congo
“The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday called on armed groups jeopardizing the response to an Ebola outbreak in Congo to immediately halt their attacks, expressing ‘great concern’ at the potential regional spread of the often deadly virus. A resolution adopted unanimously by the U.N.’s most powerful body condemned the attacks ‘in the strongest terms,’ especially ‘those posing serious security risks for responders.’ It singled out Allied Democratic Forces rebels. The council said the security situation in areas affected by the Ebola outbreak ‘is severely hampering the response efforts and facilitating the spread of the virus’ in Congo and the region…” (Lederer, 10/30).

Additional coverage of the Security Council resolution on the DRC Ebola outbreak and other response efforts is available from CIDRAP News, NPR, TIME, U.N. News, and Xinhua News.

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The Guardian: U.K. ‘exaggerated number of lives saved’ by maternal health aid project
“The U.K. government has been criticized by an aid watchdog for exaggerating the number of women’s lives it saved through its maternal health programs. A review, published by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) on Tuesday, also said the number of lives saved ‘were significantly below what they could have been, given the level of investment.’ The watchdog said programs by Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) had failed to significantly improve the quality and sustainability of maternal health care services in partner countries…” (Ratcliffe, 10/30).

Additional coverage of the report is available from The Telegraph, and The Times.

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The Guardian: Saudis demanded good publicity over Yemen aid, leaked U.N. document shows
“Saudi Arabia has demanded that aid agencies operating in Yemen should provide favorable publicity for Riyadh’s role in providing $930m (£725m) of humanitarian aid, an internal U.N. document reveals. Saudi military intervention in the three-year civil war is widely regarded as a prime cause of the humanitarian disaster that has seen 10,000 civilians killed, and left millions close to starvation. … The document, entitled Visibility Plan, covers the terms of the 2018 humanitarian budget for Yemen, and shows the extent to which the U.N. aid agency, OCHA, was put under pressure to accept the PR strings attached to money given both by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The two countries provided nearly one third of the total U.N. humanitarian budget for Yemen for this year…” (Wintour, 10/30).

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Associated Press: E.U. lists air pollution hotspots as U.N. warns on child health (Olsen, 10/29).

Axios: World Health Organization: 93% of children are breathing toxic air (Vavra, 10/29).

The BMJ: Health of 1.8 billion children is at serious risk from air pollution, says WHO (Kmietowicz, 10/30).

Bustle: WHO’s Air Pollution Statistics Suggest Up To 1.8 Billion Children Could Be Seriously Impacted (Friedmann, 10/30).

CNN: More than 90% of world’s children breathe toxic air, report says, as India prepares for most polluted season (McDougall, 10/29).

Reuters: WHO says air pollution kills 600,000 children every year (Miles, 10/29).

USA TODAY: 93 percent of the world’s children breathe toxic, polluted air each day (Rice, 10/30).

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CGTN: Faces of Africa — Compassion Without Borders ( Episode 1): Africa Is Calling (10/25).
CGTN: Faces of Africa — Compassion Without Borders ( Episode 2): The Battle Against Ebola (Omondi, 10/30).

Christian Science Monitor: Documentary gives an honest look at how one country responded to crisis (Brown, 10/30).

The Guardian: Inquiry finds refugee numbers were exaggerated by 300,000 in Uganda (Okiror, 10/30).

Mosaic: Fake drugs: the global industry putting your life at risk (Perur, 10/30).

SciDev.Net: 5-year-plan to bring HIV vaccine to market (Axt, 10/30).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Africa must tackle birth control ‘taboo’ — philanthropist Mo Ibrahim (Elks, 10/29).

U.N. News: 80,000 youngsters at risk in DRC after forcible expulsion from Angola: UNICEF (10/30).

U.N. News: FROM THE FIELD: Urban Mexico moves toward better livelihoods, cleaner cities (10/30).

VOA News: Bangladesh, Myanmar Agree to Repatriate Rohingya (10/30).

Xinhua News: U.N. urges Kenya to partner with private sector on non-communicable disease (10/31).

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Indian Express: More potent healers
Jishnu Das, senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and lead economist at the World Bank, and Madhukar Pai, director of the McGill International TB Centre

“…With a quarter of TB cases and deaths, India’s efforts are critical for the global push to ending the epidemic by 2030. But there is a problem. Well-executed programs that screen and effectively treat potential patients can stop TB in its tracks…, but most such programs rely on a top-down public health care system. With a largely unregulated private sector that treats two-thirds of its patients, what should India do differently? An innovative pilot that works closely with private providers may hold the key. … Now, the government, supported by the Global Fund, is expanding [a] model of private sector engagement to several cities through its Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis. … Based on our experience, we propose a strategy called IFMeT that may be key to successful private-public partnerships to fight TB with four components: [i]dentification, focusing, messaging, and testing. … Thus, IFMeT could take a large and seemingly intractable problem and reduce it to a series of actionable, manageable steps that can help end an epidemic that kills millions of Indians” (10/30).

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Feed the Future’s “Agrilinks”: Feed the Future Data Resources
Julie MacCartee, knowledge management specialist at USAID’s Bureau for Food Security and USAID activity manager for Agrilinks, and Anna Brenes, data steward at USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, highlight Feed the Future (FTF) data resources. The authors note, “[FTF] is committed to meeting the open data objectives of the Global Food Security Strategy and USAID’s Public Access Plan. We have made a growing number of research datasets publicly accessible since the enactment of USAID’s Open Data Policy in 2014. … These datasets will help maximize investments in follow-on programming, foster evidenced-based policy, and strengthen data-driven agricultural development programs and initiatives” (10/30).

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Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria: A Tuberculosis Q&A with the Global Fund’s Dr. Eliud Wandwalo
“This is the second in a series of interviews with the senior disease coordinators at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In this Q&A, Friends spoke with Dr. Eliud Wandwalo, the senior disease coordinator specializing in tuberculosis, about the opportunities to fight tuberculosis covered in our report, ‘At the Tipping Point: U.S. Leadership to End AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria'” (10/30).

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PLOS Blogs: After Astana: The post-conference agenda for global primary health care
Luke Allen, physician, Oxford academic clinical fellow, and global health analyst, provides a summary of topics discussed at the Global Conference on Primary Care in Astana, Kazakhstan. Allen writes, “Advancing primary health care — efficient, effective, and equitable — requires personal commitment and difficult structural reform. I urge politicians and policymakers to honor the promises made in Astana in pursuit of ‘health for all'” (10/30).

U.N. Dispatch: Countries Around the World Just Pledged to Provide Decent Primary Health Care to All Their Citizens
Alanna Shaikh, international development consultant, discusses outcomes from the conference, including the Astana declaration, which “ends with this, ‘Together we can and will achieve health and well-being for all, leaving no one behind.’ That’s an ambitious goal, and it’s going to require serious top-level commitment to make it happen. … However, current global health funding levels simply aren’t high enough to bring this kind of change” (10/30).

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IDSA’s “Science Speaks”: 49th Union World Conference on Lung Health: Private provider engagement led to 10-fold increase in Mumbai TB case detection (Aziz, 10/26).

IDSA’s “Science Speaks”: 49th Union World Conference on Lung Health: Activists call for price drop on MDR-TB drug (Aziz, 10/29).

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PMI: President’s Malaria Initiative Newsletter: October 2018
The newsletter contains announcements, news articles, and publications from or featured by PMI, including a message from U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator Ken Staley on key takeaways from the 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly and a blog post that explores new technologies for insecticide-treated bed nets (October 2018).

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