Global Health

At their meeting on Wednesday, Haitian President Rene Preval is expected to ask President Barack Obama to stop food aid to Haiti, Reuters reports. "Preval told a news conference on Monday the aid could in the long term hurt the economy of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 'I will tell him (Obama) that this first phase of assistance is finished,' said Preval," according to the news service.

During an appeal to government and private donors to pledge money to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Monday, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe warned of the repercussions tightening budgets could play in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, the Associated Press reports. "An estimated 94 percent of patients on anti-retroviral treatment in Africa count on external donor funds to provide their medications, Sidibe said,' according to the news service. "If we stop now, if we reduce the financing, the people who are on treatment today ... we will transform their hope for universal access into a universal nightmare, because they will start dying," Sidibe told the AP.

The New York Times examines development and health improvements in Sauri, Kenya, which was the first Millennium Village in Africa, a project conceived by economist Jeffrey Sachs, which aims "to show that tightly focused, technology-based and relatively straightforward programs on a number of fronts simultaneously – health care, education, job training – could rapidly lift people out of poverty."