KFF Daily Global Health Policy Report
In The News
- Efforts To Eliminate AIDS, TB, Malaria Need More Funding, Cooperation, Global Fund Says
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Agence France-Presse: Global AIDS, TB fight needs more money: health fund
“The fight against epidemics such as AIDS and tuberculosis needs greater funding and cooperation in order to wipe out the diseases, a leading aid group said Wednesday. Launching its annual report in Paris, the Global Fund said countries where it invests had seen 17.5 million people receive antiretroviral treatment against HIV and five million people tested and treated for tuberculosis…” (9/12).
- Global Health Advocates Seek More Innovative Financing For Malaria At WEF On ASEAN
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Devex: Asia-Pacific turns to innovative finance to stamp out malaria
“With grant funding for malaria drying up, global health advocates have come to this year’s World Economic Forum on ASEAN with a pitch for more innovative financing — including from institutions such as the Asian Development Bank. The Asia-Pacific region has recorded declines in malaria cases since 2010 including a 48 percent drop in cases in Southeast Asia and eight percent in Western Pacific. But the burden of malaria remains a critical public health issue…” (Ravelo, 9/13).
- U.K. Signals Willingness To Break From OECD Definition Of Official Development Assistance
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Devex: U.K. will ‘continue to reassess’ its use of ODA definition if reforms cannot be made
“The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development has reaffirmed it is not afraid to break the international rules governing aid spending and hinted it could run with its own definition if it does not achieve the ‘modernization agenda’ it is seeking. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee currently sets the rules for its 30 member countries, covering the majority of development aid spent globally. However, the U.K. has been pushing for several years to broaden what can be counted as official development assistance under the committee’s rules…” (Edwards, 9/13).
- Cancer Will Kill 9.6M People In 2018, WHO IARC Report Says, Shows Rising Rates Worldwide
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Associated Press: U.N. cancer agency: 18 million new cancer cases this year
“The World Health Organization’s cancer research arm estimated in a report released Wednesday that there will be about 18 million new cases of cancer globally this year and more than nine million deaths…” (Keaten, 9/12).CNN: Cancer will kill nearly 10 million people this year, report estimates
“…By the end of the century, cancer will be the No. 1 killer globally and the single biggest barrier to increasing our life expectancy, according to the report, released Wednesday by the World’s Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer…” (Christensen, 9/12).Reuters: Cancer deaths rise to 9.6 million as populations grow and age
“Cancer will claim the lives of 9.6 million people in 2018, accounting for one in eight of all deaths among men and one in 11 among women, the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency said on Wednesday…” (Kelland, 9/12).U.N. News: Cancer is a growing global threat and prevention is key, U.N. study shows
“…Six years ago, there were an estimated 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths, compared with 12.7 million and 7.6 million, respectively, in 2008…” (9/12).VOA News: Growing Global Cancer Crisis Should Spark Call to Action
“…The report that covers 36 types of cancer in 185 countries, finds one in five men and one in six women worldwide develop cancer during their lifetime and more men than women die of the disease. It says nearly half of the new cases and more than half of cancer deaths this year occurred in Asia, in part because nearly 60 percent of the global population lives there…” (Schlein, 9/12).
- Police Ban Public Assembly In Harare, Zimbabwe In Effort To Contain Cholera Outbreak
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Al Jazeera: Public assembly banned in Zimbabwe capital amid cholera outbreak
“Authorities in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, banned public gatherings as part of efforts to contain a cholera outbreak that has killed 21 people over the past week…” (9/12).VOA News: U.N.: Zimbabwe Cholera Outbreak Now a ‘Very Dire Situation’
“The United Nations says the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe is a ‘very dire situation’ because there are now cases outside the country’s capital, where the government has declared a state of emergency…” (Mavhunga, 9/12).Additional coverage of Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak and response efforts is available from the Associated Press, Reuters, and Xinhua News.
- USAID To Again Begin Accepting Applications For Development Innovation Ventures Program
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Devex: USAID relaunches Development Innovation Ventures program
“The United States Agency for International Development’s Development Innovation Ventures, a program that provides grants to test and scale innovations, will once again accept applications after being suspended for more than a year. Program applications were suspended in late July 2017 due to ‘forecasted funding decreases and our ongoing review of several high potential applications that we had in the pipeline,’ said David Ferguson, the director of the U.S. Global Development Lab’s Center for Development Innovation…” (Saldinger, 9/12).
- More News In Global Health
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Associated Press: Dozens of high fever deaths cause panic in northern India (Banerjee, 9/13).
BBC News: Morocco bans forced marriage and sexual violence (9/12).
Devex: What about women? The case for gendered NCD policies (Politzer, 9/13).
Forbes: Landmark Commitments Will Be Made At The Global Climate Action Summit (Shukla, 9/12).
The Guardian: Climate change driving up malnutrition rates in Pacific, U.N. warns (Doherty, 9/12).
Inter Press Service: Q&A: Achieving Sustainable Goals: “In the End it is All About People. If People Want, it Will Happen” (Jena, 9/12).
Science: As massive Zika vaccine trial struggles, researchers revive plan to intentionally infect humans (Cohen, 9/12).
The Telegraph: Pakistan’s female vaccinating team moves from polio to measles (Farmer, 9/12).
U.N. News: South-South Cooperation Day focuses in on sustainable development, a ‘new phase of cooperation’ (9/12).
United Press International: South Korea struggles to track foreign passengers in MERS alert (Lee, 9/11).
Editorials and Opinions
- Ending Global TB Requires Improved Access To Medicine, Lower Drug Prices, Innovation
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STAT: Ending tuberculosis will take lower drug prices and a new, improved innovation ecosystem
John Stephens, lawyer and associate at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center; Prabha Mahesh, tuberculosis survivor and member of Touched by TB; and Brian Citro, clinical professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and architect of the Nairobi Strategy of Tuberculosis and Human Rights“…There is a very real risk that the [political declaration that emerges from the U.N. High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis (TB)] could undermine, rather than improve, access to medicines for the more than 10 million people who fall ill with tuberculosis every year. … Here’s why: The United States government and pharmaceutical companies are driving efforts to strip language from the declaration that reminds countries they can use international legal mechanisms to lower the prices of tuberculosis drugs to make them accessible to all people who need them. But countries from the global South with high burdens of tuberculosis, civil society, and people affected by tuberculosis are fighting back. … [P]eople with tuberculosis and drug-resistant tuberculosis do not need more patents for drugs they can’t afford. Instead, they need a better system with new incentives. They need real innovation. And right now they need a political declaration … that reaffirms countries’ legal right to use [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)] flexibilities when they cannot otherwise afford the lifesaving treatments [they] desperately need” (9/13).
- New Class Of Antibiotic Needed To Defeat Superbugs
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Scientific American: Getting the Upper Hand on Superbugs
Man Wah Tan, senior director and principal scientist of Genentech’s Infectious Disease division“…Our research group at Genentech is particularly interested in the so-called ESKAPE pathogens … These bacteria, the leading causes of hospital-acquired infections, are rapidly developing resistance to more than one drug. … To have even a shot against these superbugs, we need an entirely new class of antibiotic. … In a study just published in Nature, our group describes a new class of antibiotic we developed that may provide fresh hope against the deadliest superbugs. … Novel classes of antibiotics are crucial because they allow us to reset the clock, providing new weapons that even the deadliest superbugs have not yet evolved to resist. There’s more to be done, but we’re excited about the potential of our new antibiotic class. Similar approaches could be applied to other types of antibiotics, potentially opening additional, faster avenues for creating fundamentally new antibiotics in the future. The battle against superbugs will never truly be over. But for the moment, we may have a chance to gain the upper hand” (9/12).
- Governments Must Act Urgently Against Climate Change
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Washington Post: This is absolutely unacceptable
Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change“…A recent World Health Organization report said that nine out of 10 people on the planet breathe dangerous air, and an estimated seven million premature deaths a year are caused by air pollution-related diseases, including stroke and heart disease, respiratory illness, and cancer. … The most vulnerable people are impacted the hardest. Fossil fuel combustion byproducts have been deemed one of the most serious threats to children’s health and global equality. … Carrying on along this trajectory is irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable. … Governments everywhere can reap enormous benefits, including saving billions of dollars on health care, by fostering a shift to electric transport, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, and scaling ecosystem restoration … However, to do this within the window of time we have left to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must act with boldness and unprecedented urgency…” (9/12).
- Partnerships Critical To Achieving SDGs
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Devex: Opinion: How partnerships can propel the SDGs forward
Michelle Grogg, executive director of the Cargill Foundation“Partnerships offer a pathway to success in both programs and policies, and they can take many forms. … Take for example our partnership with CARE International. … Partnering with CARE enables us to address critical social and sustainability issues in areas where we operate — the same communities where our employees live and where their children attend school. It directly connects our social responsibility and business interests. I believe this has been critical to its success. … Reflecting on the last decade of collaboration with CARE, three key themes arise in terms of what’s made it a success: 1. Impact … 2. Local voices … 3. Partner relationship … There’s power in partnerships. Now, it’s up to each of us to embrace it and work together — across sectors, geographies, and industries — to drive the SDGs forward. Because when we drive the SDGs forward, we make critical progress on our chief ambition: To help the world thrive” (9/12).
From the Global Health Policy Community
- U.S. Support Of Global Fund Helped Save 27M Lives, Friends Of The Global Fight Says
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Friends of the Global Fight: 27 Million Lives Saved Through Global Fund-Supported Programming
“In its annual Results Report released [Wednesday], the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) announced that its investments to fight the world’s deadliest infectious diseases have saved more than 27 million lives since the organization was founded in 2002. … ‘Thanks to Congress’s continued bipartisan support, America has helped save 27 million lives through the Global Fund,’ said Chris Collins, president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. ‘That’s a remarkable achievement, and it’s possible because of the Global Fund’s focus on results and accountability, and through its collaboration with U.S. bilateral global health programs including PEPFAR, the President’s Malaria Initiative, and the USAID tuberculosis program’…” (9/12).
- Wilson Center Event Examines How Aid Distribution, Armed Conflict Affect Maternal, Child Health
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Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program’s “New Security Beat”: Mothers on the Front Lines: Armed Conflict, Aid Distribution, and Maternal and Child Health
Elizabeth Wang, intern with the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative, summarizes a recent Wilson Center event on relationships among maternal and child health, aid, and armed conflict. Wang summarizes comments made by the panelists, including Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); Eran Bendavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University; Gudrun Østby, senior researcher at PRIO; Geeta Lal, coordinator of UNFPA’s Global Midwifery Program; and Kathleen Hill of USAID’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program (9/12).
- Efforts To Curb Ebola, Other Disease Outbreaks Should Be Driven By 'Moral Imperative,' Not Fear, Experts Write
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PLOS Blogs’ “Global Health”: We Need to Stop Ebola — for the Right Reasons
Abraar Karanis, internal medicine resident in the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Joia Mukherjee, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer at Partners in Health, write, “We believe it is a grave mistake to solely allow fear and self-preservation to shape our response to Ebola and other epidemic-prone diseases. By allowing fear to drive our response, we risk playing a reactive rather than proactive hand. … Rather than build our support on fear, it should be driven by an immense moral imperative and solidarity. … Of course it is critical that Ebola does not come into the United States — but that should not be the only reason we care or act” (9/12).
- Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine Recognizes 40th Anniversary Of Alma-Ata Declaration
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Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine: Primary Health Care For All — Alma-Ata Declaration’s 40th Anniversary
David Bishai, professor in population, family, and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Henry G. Taylor, deputy health officer for two rural counties in Maryland, discuss the impact of and lessons learned from the Alma-Ata declaration on its 40th anniversary, and look forward to its future. They write, “If the WHO’s reaffirmation of the Alma-Ata Declaration goes right, it will be a second chance to recognize that a ‘treatment only’ approach is not the way to address the modern scourges of noncommunicable diseases and injuries. … Now is our chance to come together, support and engage communities, and bring the goal of health for all to fruition” (September 2018).
From the U.S. Government
- USAID Announces Expansion Of Partnerships With U.S. Universities To Address Global Agricultural Challenges, End Global Hunger
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USAID: USAID Partners With U.S. Universities To Fight Global Hunger
“[On Wednesday], the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green announced the expansion of research partnerships with U.S. universities to develop and deploy solutions to address global agricultural challenges and help end hunger. USAID awarded $15 million to Mississippi State University to lead the new five-year Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish … USAID also awarded $13.6 million to Michigan State University to lead the new Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Legume Systems Research…” (9/12).