Governments and multilateral agencies around the world are attempting to learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future pandemics. One way the US government is doing this is through the newly launched Bureau of Global Health, Security and Diplomacy which will be headed by the global AIDS coordinator Ambassador John Nkengasong. In an NPR (US) interview Ambassador Nkengasong says, “The importance of [the new bureau] is the ability to coordinate, cooperate, collaborate and communicate, which is central to ensuring an effective global security response. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us three key lessons. We are collectively more connected than we thought. We are more vulnerable than we thought. And we have inequities that exist so vast that it requires such a builder to ensure an effective coordination and enhance the efficiency of our response to any disease threat.”
Meanwhile the UK government has announced the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre, which The Independent (UK) reports is, “where scientists will work to ensure future pandemics are stopped in their tracks and do not cause the same disruption to everyday life as COVID-19.… It is also hoped the facility will help the UK tackle ‘disease X’ by enhancing preparedness for yet-to-be-identified pathogens with pandemic potential.”
- Read The Telegraph on rising dengue cases around the world and the risk to pregnant people and their babies.
- Read Journal of Human Rights Practice on the need for strong and binding international laws that protect the right to medicines and vaccines.
- Read The Atlantic on concerns avian flu may be becoming endemic in North America.
- Read The Guardian on a new study that finds a link between air pollution and antibiotic resistance.
- Read STAT on rising rates of measles among adults.
- Read Science on planned clinical trials for long COVID.
- Read BBC on an accidental discovery that may help fight malaria.
New NIAID Leader
Science (US) reports on the appointment of Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo as the new haed of NIAID: “Her selection is drawing praise from researchers and AIDS activists. The Infectious Diseases Society of America cited her ‘innumerable qualifications,’ including her mentorship of new infectious disease specialists at UAB. Marrazzo will also be the first openly gay director of an NIH institute.” Vox (US) reports, “Marrazzo’s career has been devoted to finding new ways to test for, prevent, and treat infections spread through sex. And her appointment comes as sexually transmitted infection rates — especially syphilis and gonorrhea — are screeching upward at an alarming pace, while funding to address them is being slashed at the federal level following contentious debt limit deal negotiations. Her appointment has led to a rare moment of hope, and even jubilation, among experts in the field.”
A Right to Medicine
Lisa Forman writes in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (UK) that the disparities in access to vaccines and medicine through the COVID-19 pandemic, “illuminate the need for stronger international legal protections capable of mitigating the restrictive impact of intellectual property rights on global access to affordable medicines and vaccines…. ongoing debates, including during COVID-19, often focus primarily on the impact of essential public and global health responses on intellectual property rights rather than on the rights to life, health, and dignity of millions of people globally. Few issues of global health, global governance, and international law underscore the tensions between public and commercial interests more starkly. Now, more than ever, we need strong and binding international law protections of this fundamental human right.”
The Guardian (UK) reports, “Air pollution is helping to drive a rise in antibiotic resistance that poses a significant threat to human health worldwide, a global study suggests. The analysis, using data from more than 100 countries spanning nearly two decades, indicates that increased air pollution is linked with rising antibiotic resistance across every country and continent. It also suggests the link between the two has strengthened over time, with increases in air pollution levels coinciding with larger rises in antibiotic resistance. Read the study in The Lancet.
Dengue Cases on the Rise
The Star (Bangladesh) reports, “The nation is grappling with a record deadly outbreak of dengue fever, with hospitals struggling to make space for patients as the disease spreads rapidly in the densely-populated country. At least 293 people have died so far in 2023 and nearly 61,500 infected, according to official figures, making this the deadliest year since the first recorded epidemic in 2000.”
Health Policy Watch (Switzerland) reports, “The number of dengue cases in the Americas has surpassed 3 million this year, as climate change makes people more vulnerable to the disease and the world more hospitable to the mosquitoes that carry it. Rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns are providing a boon to the Aedis aegypti mosquito, the main carrier of dengue…. Climate change is also extending the geographical range where the mosquito can survive, as warmer winters and milder autumns lead to fewer cold-weather deaths, meaning that more mosquitoes survive to adulthood.”
The Telegraph (UK) reports, “After years of suppression during the coronavirus pandemic, dengue is now surging across the planet, with hospitals in the worst-affected countries – from Peru to Bangladesh – overwhelmed by sick patients in recent months. But as the virus spreads, with half the world’s population believed to be at risk of catching dengue, experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the danger it poses to pregnant women. Emerging research has found the disease can have fatal consequences or lifelong complications for both mothers and their unborn babies.
Measles and Adults
STAT (US) reports on an uptick of cases of measles among adults in the UK and the US. “The reality of measles as a disease that strikes almost uniquely in childhood is changing. The shift is driven in part by the fact that the first wave of children whose parents shunned vaccination in the late 1990s and early 2000s — in response to a fallacious, since-retracted study in the Lancet that linked measles vaccine to autism — are now in young adulthood…. The growing susceptibility of adults worries infectious disease experts who know how difficult this infection can be when it is experienced in adulthood. To be clear, measles is hardest on babies. But after that very vulnerable demographic, those most likely to be hospitalized for measles infections are adults over the age of 25.”
Long COVID
NPR’s Goats and Soda Blog (US) reports on new (not yet peer reviewed) research into why some people get long COVID. “The new research, which was an international collaboration between dozens of scientists, describes how some people carry a version of a single gene, FOXP4, that is associated with developing long COVID. Longet calls the new research an ‘important element’ in understanding why some people's COVID-19 symptoms seemingly never resolve. Long COVID only affects a small percentage of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, but the scope of the pandemic means that many millions of people are suffering. Roughly 25 million people in the US and over 17 million people in Europe have long COVID symptoms, with many more in other parts of the world.”
Science (US) reports the US NIH “announced new clinical trials to test a diverse array of treatment strategies—from an intravenous immune drug to light therapy and a dietary supplement—in people with Long Covid, the disabling syndrome that can follow infection with the pandemic coronavirus. The focus is on mitigating some of the most common and debilitating symptoms including brain fog and sleep troubles…. The trials are part of NIH’s RECOVER initiative, which received more than $1 billion in funding from Congress in December 2020 and launched in early 2021. Since then, it has frequently drawn criticism for moving too slowly and not helping Long Covid patients in desperate need of effective care. RECOVER initially focused on defining the post infection syndrome in part to help quantify the problem and identify risk factors, though RECOVER’s leaders acknowledged yesterday at a press briefing that they still can’t say how many people are affected in the United States.”
Ed Yong reports in The Atlantic (US) on the fatigue experienced by many with long COVID. “Fatigue is among the most common and most disabling of long COVID’s symptoms, and a signature of similar chronic illnesses such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS). But in these diseases, fatigue is so distinct from everyday weariness that most of the people I have talked with were unprepared for how severe, multifaceted, and persistent it can be.
New Way to Fight Malaria
BBC (UK) reports, “Scientists have found a naturally occurring strain of bacteria which can help stop the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. They found it by chance, after a colony of mosquitoes in one experiment did not develop the malaria parasite. The researchers say the bacteria could be a new tool for fighting one of the world's oldest diseases, which kills 600,000 people every year. Trials assessing its safety in the real world are now taking place…. New data published in Science magazine suggests the bacteria can reduce a mosquito's parasite load by up to 73%. The bacteria works by secreting a small molecule, known as harmane, which inhibits the early stages of the malaria parasite growing in the mosquito's gut…. scientists discovered that harmane can either be ingested orally by the mosquito, if mixed with sugar, or absorbed through its cuticle on contact. This lays open the possibility of treating surfaces in areas where the insects rest with the active compound.” Read the paper in Science.
Mpox in China
MIT Technology Review (US) reports, “The World Health Organization reports China is currently experiencing the world’s fastest increase in cases of mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), and the country needs to act fast to contain the spread. While the Americas and Europe have mostly contained the mpox outbreak that started in mid-2022, Asia has emerged as the disease’s new hot spot. Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, which all saw sporadic imported cases last year, have reported weekly new case numbers in the double digits in 2023, meaning the virus has been spreading in the domestic population. But according to the latest data reported to the WHO, China has surpassed all other countries in the world, with 315 confirmed cases in just the past three months—though irregular case reporting from Beijing means it’s impossible to know the true scale of the disease at this point.”
Severe Flu Rates Higher in LMICs
CIDRAP (US) reports, “The risk of flu-related intensive care unit (ICU) admission was sevenfold higher in lower middle-income countries (LMICs) than in high-income countries (HICs), according to an analysis yesterday in the Journal of Infectious Diseases…. The researchers noted that flu vaccination is generally less available in LMICs. ‘Moreover, differences in standards of care and/or lack of access to antivirals in LMIC are also a possible explanation,’ they wrote. ‘Delayed care-seeking in LMIC could contribute to the increased severity.’"
Avian Flu
The Atlantic (US) reports on the ongoing H5N1 avian flu outbreak in North America. “For months, experts worried most about the outbreak’s magnitude—it struck so swiftly and lethally that it’s become the most deadly H5N1 epidemic recorded in North America. Now the looming concern is length: when, and if, the virus will withdraw…. The longer the virus lingers, the greater the chance that it will pose a different danger: permanent tenancy among mammals, a group that, historically, the virus has not easily infected and spread among. Some experts worry that the virus has now managed to establish new methods of transmission in select communities of mink and foxes on fur farms, and maybe in wild seals. The chances of an outbreak among people—certainly, of another pandemic—are still, in absolute terms, low, Nídia Trovão, a virologist at the Fogarty International Center, told me. But the more new places H5N1 establishes itself for good, the more its threat to us will grow.”
CIDRAP (US) reports, “In the steady stream of new H5N1 avian flu developments, China and Russia reported new H5N1 outbreaks in newly affected parts of their countries, with other countries reporting more detections in mammals, including a cat at a second animal shelter in South Korea.”
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