Thursday, December 18
Shadow

Author: GHealth News

Global health has improved for decades. Climate change could change that.

Global health has improved for decades. Climate change could change that.

Global Health
A patient rests under a mosquito net at the dengue ward at Benazir Bhutto Hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Oct. 13. Without more action, a report found, billions more people worldwide could be at risk of contracting diseases like dengue fever, which is spread by mosquitoes that are expanding their range as temperatures warm. Muhammad Reza / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images By Evan Bush As temperatures warm, the health risks of climate change are expected to intensify in the U.S. and worldwide. The effects of climate change have already left millions of people hungry, caused deaths during heat waves and strained some people’s mental health as they are forced to leave their homes because of extreme weather, according to a major report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Pa...
WHO Predicts COVID Could Still ‘Echo Around the World’

WHO Predicts COVID Could Still ‘Echo Around the World’

COVID19
GHealth News - After several weeks of declines in new reported cases of COVID-19, the numbers are increasing globally once again, particularly in parts of Asia and Western Europe, the World Health Organization says. "These increases are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases we're seeing are just the tip of the iceberg," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said at a news briefing Wednesday. As a result, local outbreaks and surges in COVID-19 cases are likely, "particularly in areas where measures to prevent transmission have been lifted," he said. And death rates remain high in many nations, particularly those with low levels of vaccination. "Each country is facing a different situation with different challenges, but t...
Disrupting Global Health: From Allyship To Collective Liberation

Disrupting Global Health: From Allyship To Collective Liberation

Global Health
By: Madhukar Pai Global health is a field that was born out of colonialism and white supremacy. Even today, it is neither diverse nor truly global. Every aspect of global health is dominated by individuals and institutions in high-income countries (HIC). This includes funding, authorship of publications, leadership of agencies, composition of boards, editorial positions, awards, and even participation in conferences. So, if global health has to be reimagined, people that typically hold power and privilege must master the art of allyship, where they see their primary role as allies or accomplices rather than leaders. Data show that two-thirds of global health agencies are headquartered in just three countries: Switzerland, UK and USA. More than 80% of CEOs and ...
WHO advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread

WHO advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread

Global Health
GHealth News - The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent "any potential spills" that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters. Like many other countries, Ukraine has public health laboratories researching how to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting both animals and humans including, most recently, COVID-19. Its labs have received support from the United States, the European Union and the WHO. Biosecurity experts say Russia's movement of troops into Ukraine and bombardment of its cities have raised the risk of an escape of disease-causing pathogens, should any of those facilities be damaged. In response to questions from Reuters about its work...
Cameroon launches year-long anti-malaria campaign

Cameroon launches year-long anti-malaria campaign

Communicable Diseases
GHealth News - Cameroon launched a year-long anti-malaria campaign dubbed "Stop Malaria" on Thursday amidst rising numbers of infections. The campaign will take place nationwide targeting all communities and especially business leaders, local elected officials, traditional rulers, religious rulers and associations, Manaouda Malachie, the country's Minister of Public Health said while launching the campaign in the capital, Yaounde. "This is one of our biggest anti-malaria campaigns which aims to step up official efforts to reduce the infection and death rate from malaria and to alleviate its heavy social and economic burden on the population," Malachie told reporters. "We have seen an increase in infection rate but the Cameroonian government will spare no efforts in reversing the t...
Climate change: IPCC report warns of ‘irreversible’ impacts of global warming

Climate change: IPCC report warns of ‘irreversible’ impacts of global warming

Climate Change
By Matt McGrath Many of the impacts of global warming are now simply "irreversible" according to the UN's latest assessment. But the authors of a new report say that there is still a brief window of time to avoid the very worst. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that humans and nature are being pushed beyond their abilities to adapt. Over 40% of the world's population are "highly vulnerable" to climate, the sombre study finds. But there's hope that if the rise in temperatures is kept below 1.5C, it would reduce projected losses. Just four months on from COP26, where world leaders committed themselves to rapid action on climate change, this new UN study shows the scale of their task. "Our report clearly indicates that places where people live and wo...
War in Ukraine could lead to ‘devastating’ tuberculosis problem, warns Anthony Fauci

War in Ukraine could lead to ‘devastating’ tuberculosis problem, warns Anthony Fauci

Global Health
By Harriet Barber Dr Anthony Fauci spoke exclusively to The Telegraph about TB in Ukraine CREDIT: J. Scott Applewhite /AP Pool The Russian invasion of Ukraine could be “devastating” for tuberculosis control in eastern Europe, and will cause a “terrible public health tragedy”, Dr Anthony Fauci has warned. Ukraine reports roughly 30,000 new TB cases annually and has one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant TB in the world. According to the World Health Organization estimates, Ukraine has the fourth highest TB incidence rate among the 53 countries of the WHO European Region. “[The war] could be devastating, quite frankly,” Dr Fauci, the chief medical officer of the United States, told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview.  “As a public health official, as a scien...
4 lessons from the life of global health visionary Paul Farmer

4 lessons from the life of global health visionary Paul Farmer

Global Health
By: Keren Landman The death of global health visionary Paul Farmer on February 21 came at a bleak moment for the world. In the wake of a badly botched pandemic response, the world’s most vulnerable face threats from a changing climate, rising regional violence, and the specter of the ripple effects of armed conflict in Europe. It can feel like a particularly hard time to find hope. And yet a recurring theme across the deluge of obituaries and remembrances from colleagues and admirers of Farmer is his unrelenting optimism about delivering sophisticated medical care to the world’s poorest people. Farmer’s rejection of cynicism and sense of moral clarity were foundational to his immense contributions to global heal...
Woman cured of HIV after stem cell transplant

Woman cured of HIV after stem cell transplant

Communicable Diseases
Students of Yangzhou University in East China's Jiangsu Province, put red ribbon on their hands as an appeal to eliminate social discrimination against HIV patients on World AIDs Day. Photo: cnsphoto GHealth News - A patient with leukaemia in the United States has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant, researchers say. The case, presented on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in the US city of Denver, was the first involving umbilical cord blood to treat acute myeloid leukaemia, which starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. Since receiving the cord blood, the middle-aged woman of mixed race has been in remission and free of HIV for 14 months, without the need for ...
COVID Pushed Global Health Institutions to Their Limits

COVID Pushed Global Health Institutions to Their Limits

COVID19
By: Lawrence O. Gostin Italian army nurse helps a COVID patient at a camp hospital in Perugia that was opened to relieve the burden on nearby Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital. In December of 2020, the world continued to struggle with the pandemic's successive waves. Credit: Tommaso Ausili/Contrasto/Redux Pictures Moments of existential crisis can turn into opportunities for bold reform. World War II led to the creation of transformative institutions—the United Nations in 1945 and the World Health Organization in 1948. The birth of the WHO came the same year that the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The COVID pandemic marks just such a moment of crisis. But instead of ushering in significant change, it has fractured global solidarity. That, in turn, ha...