Global Health

By: Jeff Sparrow Nurse in a Moscow hospital It’s nearly inevitable that we will face another pandemic. If we don’t plan to counter it, tomorrow will be like today, except much, much worse. For decades, scientists warned that urban encroachment on pristine habitats would unleash dangerous new viruses. Covid-19 should not have been a surprise – and, since viruses always mutate, neither should Omicron have been. Just as Omicron replaced Delta, something else will replace Omicron. It might be a fresh variant of Covid; it might be something completely new. “[A]nother pandemic is coming,” says Debora MacKenzie in her book Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened, “and no one can predict which pathogen will cause the next one.” That does...

Catherine Arsenault, Epidemiologist and Global Health Researcher and Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - VIVIANNE CONROY By: Karl Moore From a management point of view, executives agree on the importance of leadership that adapts to the local culture. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic has further underlined the implication of acting accordingly to country contexts when it comes to global health systems. The coronavirus responses across the globe are precisely the subject of Catherine Arsenault’s current multi-country research project as a postdoctoral research scientist at Harvard’s Department of Global Health and Population. “I'm working on looking at the resilience of health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic by looking at the effect of the ...

A masked couple walks on the empty Trocadero next to the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Nearly two years into a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, every country, including the United States, remains dangerously unprepared to respond to future epidemic and pandemic threats, according to a report released Wednesday assessing the efforts of 195 countries. Researchers compiling the Global Health Security Index — a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a D.C.-based nonprofit global security group, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health— found insufficient capacity in every country, which they said left the world vulnerable to future health emergencies, including some that might be more d...

Supporting aspirational public health leaders from Africa in acquiring advanced skills and competencies to strategize, manage and lead public health programmes that will transform public health in Africa. The African Union Commission launched the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) – Kofi Annan Global Health Leadership Programme on 25 May 2020 in partnership with the Kofi Annan Foundation, following its approval by the Governing Board of Africa CDC in March 2018.  The aim is to support aspirational Public Health Leaders (Fellows) from Africa in acquiring advanced skills and competencies to strategize, manage and lead public health programmes that will transform public health in Africa. Fellows admitted in the programme w...

By Melissa Cunningham It was once deemed the “wonder drug” in the fight against heart attacks and strokes. But an influential medical taskforce in the United States has overhauled guidelines for aspirin, recommending that middle-aged and older people no longer take a low dose of the mild analgesic to prevent a first heart attack or stroke, in a move experts hope will make Australians rethink taking aspirin preventatively of their own accord. Bleeding risks for adults in their 60s and older who haven’t had a heart attack or stroke outweigh potential benefits from the painkiller, the US Preventive Services Task Force said in its draft guidance. Doctors have long recommended daily low-dose aspirin for many patients who have already had a heart attack or stroke, and the ta...

Scientists have confirmed that malaria parasites in Africa have developed resistance to a key family of drugs used to protect against them. “We’ve all been expecting and dreading this for quite some time,” says Leann Tilley, a biochemist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, who researches the molecular basis of antimalarial resistance. Signs of drug resistance have long been present in Africa: for instance, in Rwanda between 2012 and 2015, scientists detected the existence of gene mutations associated with resistance in malaria parasites. A new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine today, bolsters these findings by showing that such mutations are causing an observable drop in antimalarials’ ability to quickly treat people with the disease. The ‘gold stand...

Not enough is being done to prepare for the next pandemic, a new report from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has said. In the report, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation challenged nations to invest long-term in healthcare systems as well as calling for a reduction in vaccine and resource inequalities between high and low income nations. “It seems obvious that in a globalized world, where people and goods move constantly across borders, it’s insufficient for rich countries to be the only ones with the equipment and resources to sequence viruses,” the report stated. In 2015, Bill Gates warned of the threat of a global pandemic on human life, and in the report outlined these challenges, such as 31 million additional people in extreme poverty as a result of coronavi...

A community health worker carries out a rapid diagnosis test for malaria in the village of Gbapi, Kenema District The Covid-19 pandemic had a "devastating" impact on the fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in 2020, according to a report released by the Global Fund on Wednesday. "To mark our 20th anniversary, we had hoped to focus this year's report on the extraordinary stories of courage and resilience that made possible the progress we have achieved against HIV, TB and malaria over the last two decades," said Peter Sands, the Global Fund's executive director.  "But the 2020 numbers force a different focus. They confirm what we feared might happen when Covid-19 struck," he said. "The impact of Covid-19 on the fight against HIV, TB and malar...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is announcing a new center designed to advance the use of forecasting and outbreak analytics in public health decision making. Once established, the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics will bring together next-generation public health data, expert disease modelers, public health emergency responders, and high-quality communications, to meet the needs of decision makers.  The new center will accelerate access to and use of data for public health decision-makers who need information to mitigate the effects of disease threats, such as social and economic disruption. The center will prioritize equity and accessibility, while serving as a hub for innovation and research on disease modeling. “This is an amazing...

By Daniel E. Slotnik and Noah Weiland As the Delta variant rages around the world, a heated debate has arisen over whether public health officials should recommend booster shots. On one side are global health officials who contend that available vaccines would be better used to inoculate high-risk people in poor nations where few have gotten the shots. On the other are leaders and health officials in wealthier countries, who are setting aside doses for more vulnerable people who may need additional doses to protect them from the virus. Biden administration officials have already begun developing a plan that would roll out third shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as early as this fall, saying the logistics are too complicated to wait for scientific certainty that the e...