Bill Frist's New Venture, Smoking, Female Condoms

News you might have missed . . .

It worked for another Bill. Former Sen. Bill Frist says he's going to make global health--particularly the health and well-being of children and their mothers in the poorest parts of the world--the focus of his life's work. According to an interview in the Tennessean, Frist is teaming up with Save the Children on the mother-and-child survival effort and with Bono on a project to interject more discussion of global health in the 2008 U.S. Presidential race. Given Frist's previous track record on the Terry Schiavo case and other health matters, could that signal even greater politicization of child-survival efforts, as Larry Hollon of Perspectives fears?

Smokeout in the Balkans. Bloggers react to the new public smoking ban in Albania and ponder whether Serbia is next. (Hat tip to Global Voices Online)

Bye Bye Condoms. The Ugandan AIDS Commission (UAC) halts distribution of female condoms for two years, saying women found them difficult and even painful to use at times. Or is it that women still don't have much of a say in their sexual relations with men? James Kigozi, a spokesperson for the UAC told The Monitor of Kampala, "Research shows that one of the reasons why the female condoms were not popular is that women are not empowered in society and therefore their husbands and boyfriends were forcing them to remove them after they had inserted them." (The Monitor)