COP28 the UN meeting of governments and other interested parties on climate change is underway in Dubai, UAE and health was finally on the agenda over the weekend. Health Policy Watch (Switzerland) reports, “In what is being described as a historic and pivotal moment by top COP28 and World Health Organization (WHO) officials, 124 countries have endorsed the Declaration of Climate and Health. The political declaration marks the first time that the health impacts of climate change have taken centre stage in 28 years of UN climate talks.” Nature (UK) reports on “three major ways that climate is harming human health…. Global warming is contributing to infectious diseases expanding into newer regions…. [in addition to malaria] warmer conditions are also increasing the rate of spread of viral diseases such as dengue, zika and chikungunya, and expanding the range of harmful Vibrio bacteria…. Increased drought, rising sea levels, reduced access to clean water and migration also create larger breeding grounds for pathogens, especially in low- and middle-income countries, says Lowe who is also at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, in Barcelona. “A combination of climate change, land-use change and agricultural practices can increase the risk of disease spillover from animals to humans which can, of course, lead to pandemics”, they say.”
AP (US) quotes WHO’s Tedros: “Although the climate crisis is a health crisis, it’s well overdue that 27 COPs have been and gone without a serious discussion of health. Undoubtedly, health stands as the most compelling reason for taking climate action.”
Reuters (UK) reports, “Climate change is the biggest threat to human health in Africa and the rest of the world, the head of the continent's public health agency said. Mitigating that risk was top of his agenda, Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Reuters as he headed to the COP28…. In an online interview, he said the threat of ‘a climate change-related disease becoming a pandemic and coming from Africa’ was what kept him awake at night. Since the start of this year, Kaseya said Africa has tackled 158 disease outbreaks. ‘Each outbreak, if not well managed, can become a pandemic,’ he said.”
If You Are in a Hurry
- Read HealthWorld on a call to extend patent waivers for COVID diagnostics and therapeutics.
- Read Washington Post on a global surge in malaria cases.
- Read Health Times on the challenge of reaching zero dose children with vaccines.
- Read The Centre for Investigative Journalism on the path to vaccine independence in Africa.
- Read STAT on the climate impact of life saving health interventions and how to lessen that impact.
- Read a BMJ editorial calling for youth involvement in pandemic preparedness.
Call to Extend COVID TRIPS Waver
HealthWorld (India) reports, “Four countries, including India and South Africa, have asked
the WTO members to extend patent waiver to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics as the pandemic is still alive and the risk of new variants emerging…. This would also complement and support the work of the WHO (World Health Organization) on a pandemic treaty. GC is the second highest decision making body of the organisation after the Ministerial Conference (MC). The 13th MC is scheduled in Abu Dhabi in February next year…. ‘These members (South Africa, India, Indonesia and Brazil) reiterated that the COVID-19 pandemic is still alive, and that the risk of new variants remains real. In their view, the WTO needs to show it is relevant and credible and must rehabilitate itself by providing responses not only to questions of trade, but also of development’ the Geneva-based official said.”
Worldwide Surge in Malaria Cases
Washington Post (US) reports, “The number of malaria cases worldwide surged by millions last year, the World Health Organization said Thursday — a change driven by extreme weather events such as catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, as well as other conflicts and humanitarian crises that allowed the deadly disease to proliferate. The WHO said the spike came after a two-decade stretch beginning in 2000 that saw global cases of malaria fall from 243 million to 233 million, despite population booms in many parts of the developing world…. [The] report makes clear that many factors can shape the rise or fall of malaria, a potentially fatal disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito that feeds on humans. They include political unrest and conflict, humanitarian crises, lack of funding and resistance to front-line medications. The lingering impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the interruptions it caused in health care access also played a role.” Read the report.
TB Funding
A new report from Treatment Action Group (TAG) documents TB research funding trends. “Despite United Nations (UN) member states publicly reaffirming the goal to end tuberculosis (TB) by 2030 at the 2023 High-Level Meeting (HLM) on TB, cumulative funding for tuberculosis research and development (R&D) over the past five years has totaled less than half of the $10 billion pledged at the previous HLM in 2018, according to a new report released by Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership. Without an unprecedented mobilization of resources, the world will remain perilously off-track of making good on this historic commitment to finally defeat history’s deadliest infectious disease.”
Reaching “Zero Dose” Children
Health Times (Zimbabwe) reports, “Despite immunisation being one of the most impactful and cost-effective public health interventions, responsible for preventing over 4 million deaths every year, the African continent is currently lagging behind other world regions in terms of access to vaccines.” Africa CDC’s Kaseya is quoted: This is a time to act and form strong partnerships to deliver services for our children. It is time to act because we still have a huge number of children on zero-dose and we need to act with speed. We saw that COVID-19 was a major challenge to our health systems and highlighted our health systems' weaknesses.”
Vaccine Independence for Africa
The Centre for Investigative Journalism (Malawi) reports, “The Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has secured $ 1 billion in funding from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) to assist African countries in scaling up the manufacturing of vaccines by 2040 to reach 60 percent of local needs from the current 30 percent…. To protect itself from pandemics and disease outbreaks in the future, Africa is expected to increase its production of vaccinations significantly. Additionally, the continent wants to make sure that delays like those experienced by African countries in obtaining COVID-19 vaccines never occur again. Africa, CDC Director-General, Dr. Jean Kaseya said local manufacturing of various vaccines is akin to the second independence of Africa after the colonial independence of the 1960s. ‘We have the ambition to position Africa as a manufacturing hub because we believe the time has come for the world to hear from Africa and Africans themselves,’ Dr. Kaseya said.
Africa Epidemics Fund
Devex (US) reports, “The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Union Commission are working to develop a new pool of finance to assist countries in preparation and response to disease threats on the continent…. A major part of bringing this fund to life will be fundraising. While Africa CDC hopes African governments robustly allocate funds from their own national budgets, they also hope development partners contribute to the fund.”
Mpox in DRC
Science (US) reports, “Researchers have documented occasional spread among household contacts, but the MPXV strain in the DRC, designated clade I, has never been linked to sexual transmission, a major mode of transmission for the clade IIb strain in the global outbreak. Researchers are now rushing to analyze the latest DRC cases to see whether the local virus has changed genetically, and some scientists suggest the country should consider at least targeted use of the mpox vaccines that are now widely available in wealthy countries outside of Africa.” The CEO of Bavarian Nordic, the company that makes the smallpox vaccine that is also used to prevent mpox says DRC has not requested the vaccine, but “is willing to support the current situation in the DRC.” Epidemiologist Anne Rimoin who coauthored a report on the outbreak “says the DRC’s reluctance to vaccinate stemmed in part from the difficulty of determining who should receive the shots when the disease appeared to mainly spread from animals sporadically in rural areas. Targeting groups at high-risk of sexual transmission of the virus, she says, simplifies the task. ‘It’s a much easier thing to tackle than widespread vaccination in very remote, logistically complex areas,’ Rimoin says.”
New Insights into Dengue Infections
Medical Xpress (Isle of Man) reports that as dengue spreads to new areas of the world, “New research involving epidemiological models and data from more than 4,400 people in Nicaragua suggests that it's time immunologists developed a new framework to understand population immunity to dengue. For decades, it was believed that once you were infected with dengue virus, the immunity lasted for life. The dogma persisted in the face of observational data, which found that people who were previously infected were more susceptible to severe dengue if infected again. But an international collaborative group of researchers has now conclusively shown that immunity not only wanes, it tends to wax and wane—a discovery that reveals dengue infection to be far more complex than previously thought.”
US Prison Deaths from COVID
CIDRAP (US) reports, “The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic increase in deaths among jailed Americans, a new study in Science Advances shows, with deaths among prisoners 3.4 times greater than in the general population in 2020. Overall, total mortality increased 77% in 2020 relative to 2019, the authors said. Though the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 2,490 deaths attributable to COVID-19 (suspected or confirmed as a cause of death) from March 2020 to February 2021 across 49 states, that rate of 1.5 deaths per 1,000 prisoners does not take into account how and if the pandemic resulted in excess mortality in prisons.” Read the study.
Long COVID Rates May be Decreasing
Scientific American (US) reports, “studies suggest the rates of long COVID may be dropping. Although the investigations were not designed to assess the reason for this trend, scientists suspect the downturn is a result of increased immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), milder variants of that pathogen and improved treatments. It is a welcome reprieve, but the decline does not help the millions of people who are already suffering from long COVID. Moreover experts warn that the risk is still not zero. And without a clear explanation for the downward trend, it is unclear whether it will continue…. And even if we are lucky, many experts argue that a dwindling risk is still a very real one. Nicole Ford, a senior health scientist at the CDC, who led the agency’s investigation of long COVID earlier this year, notes that at the end of the study period in June 2023, roughly one in 10 adults who previously reported a COVID infection were still suffering from persistent symptoms. Of those, one in four had difficulty performing day-to-day activities—an alarming find, given that treatment is still lacking, and some patients have yet to fully recover. ‘The take-home from this study is that long COVID is common,’ Ford says. ‘It can impact absolutely anyone.’”
Lifesaving Health Products and Climate Change
STAT (US) reports, “A new report, published on Tuesday by the global health initiative Unitaid, looks into [the impact of health interventions and climate change], quantifying the environmental impact of 10 essential public health items…. Altogether, these products — including mosquito nets, rapid testing, pills, and injectables — contribute nearly 3.5 megatons of greenhouse gases (GHG) per year, more than the total emissions of the city of Geneva. Reducing their use isn’t an option. But the report points to strategies that could lead to 70% reduction in emissions by 2030, many of which could be implemented at no additional costs.”
The Challenges of Challenge Trials
Nature (UK) reports, “An advocacy group is pushing for more ‘human challenge’ trials to spur vaccine discovery. Following COVID-19 and Zika studies, hepatitis C could be next…. But conducting such trials involves ethical scrutiny of the potential benefits and risks. The broad consensus among research ethicists is that the trials are permissible only if the benefits are great, the risk to participants is low and the knowledge they provide could not easily be gained from other studies.”
Involving Youth in Pandemic Preparedness
Merette Khalil, Cyubahiro Karangwa Verite and Shakira Choonara call in a BMJ (UK) editorial for investment in youth led efforts for gender equality and pandemic preparedness. “Women, people aged under 30, and marginalised populations, especially from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), continue to face barriers to participation in global health governance systems…. The solution to reducing health and gender inequalities requires an intersectional and multisectoral approach that considers social, political, environmental, environmental, and structural factors.2 In planning for future health emergencies, whether the next pandemic or the climate crisis, it is crucial to ensure that those most directly affected (such as indigenous and displaced youth from LMICs) are engaged throughout the humanitarian responses cycles (from preparedness to recovery).
Promising Animal Data for mRNA Malaria Vaccine
The Scientist (Canada) reports, “in a Nature Immunology paper, researchers reported a new mRNA vaccine that induced a tailored immune response in the livers of mice via the activation of liver-specific tissue resident memory T cells (Trm cells), which control early stages of infection and prevent illness. With further development, the vaccine could level the playing field in the fight against malaria.” Read the paper. |
