H5N1

The Lancet Commission on 21st-Century Global Health Threats

Via The Lancet, December 15, 2022: The Lancet Commission on 21st-Century Global Health Threats. 

The world has lived through an extraordinary global health threat, the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to nearly 20 million deaths, staggering economic losses, a generational decline in human capital, and the first decline in global life expectancy since 1950 (the first year when UN estimates were published). Another major threat, climate change, now has broad scientific, political, and social recognition. The spectre of nuclear confrontation has re-emerged as a serious threat during the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The three Cs—COVID-19, climate change, and conflict—highlight that the steady global health progress of the past 70 years will not necessarily continue in the next 70 years. But there are many other threats beyond the three Cs that threaten to undermine future global health progress, including rising antimicrobial resistance, increasing obesity, inverted population pyramids, eroding sexual and reproductive rights for women, food insecurity, and fraying multilateralism. How global health advances or retreats will depend crucially on the multiplicity of these threats and how they intersect. 

The global community and many nations have launched commissions, task forces, and panels to draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development explored the post-pandemic world for Europe and made far-reaching recommendations based on a One Health lens. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response called for the creation of new institutions and financing mechanisms to prepare the world for new pandemics and other threats. 

Multiple commissions, task forces, and panels have addressed climate change, including two Lancet Commissions, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produces regular multistakeholder assessments. These global convenings have been mirrored by multiple national reviews. Although there are high-profile initiatives for pandemics and climate change, other threats have received less widespread attention or have been debated largely in academic subdisciplines.  

Governments, international organisations, and local communities will need to manage multiple threats at the same time. Many of these threats interact and lead to complex health, economic, social, and geopolitical consequences. Climate change, population growth, and political fragility may coincide leading to large-scale migration. Food systems can be designed to improve health, reduce poverty, and slow climate change, or the reverse.  

Specific and cross-cutting technologies and policies are needed to reduce the risk of emerging threats or to decrease the harms from threats as they unfold. The most important strategies for risk and harm reduction are unlikely to emerge if each threat is examined in isolation from the others.  

We have established the Lancet Commission on 21st-Century Global Health Threats to examine the broad set of threats facing the world over the rest of the century. This long perspective is needed since threats such as climate change, food systems, antimicrobial resistance, or inverted population pyramids require many decades for actions to alter future trajectories. The Sustainable Development Goal focus on 2030 is an important motivator for immediate policy action, but a longer-term perspective is needed to fully assess and respond to emerging threats.

This Commission's work will be informed by diverse expertise. The Commission members are drawn from many distinct groups: current and former heads of state, intergovernmental organisation leaders, leaders of public health institutions, global health funders, global health thought leaders, and civil society and youth organisations. The Commission represents a diverse group with gender parity and regional balance so that many perspectives are brought to bear on finding cross-cutting tools and solutions for future threats. The Commission will meet over the next 2 years to assess the evidence produced by various working groups and will release its analysis and recommendations by the end of 2024.

Tonga: Volcanic eruption and tsunami

Via ReliefWeb, a UNICEF news release: Tonga: Volcanic Eruption and Tsunami - Jan 2022. Several others are available on the website. Excerpt:

After weeks of volcanic activity emitting ash, the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano in Tonga erupted violently on 15 January. The eruption is said to be one of the biggest in Tonga in the last 30 years, with satellite imagery indicating a 5 km wide plume of ash, steam, and gas, rising approximately 20 km above the volcano. 

The volcanic eruption generated a 1.2-metre tsunami that crashed ashore in coastal areas of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa. The estimated population within 100 km of the volcano is 76,000 people. [...]  

Tonga has been blanketed by 1-2 cm of volcanic ash, affecting the majority of the country and impacting on water and food supplies. Air quality is also of concern. Power has been disrupted, and communications with Tonga are a challenge as regular phone lines are down, the internet cable from Fiji to Tonga seems to have been damaged, and satellite phones are only working intermittently.  

Alert level 4 remains active for the volcano, meaning that eruption hazards are confined to areas near or around the volcano. 

Madagascar families 'eating mud' in worst drought

Via BBC News: Madagascar families 'eating mud' in worst drought.

The World Food Programme is warning that the worst drought in southern Madagascar for four decades is causing hunger and famine-like conditions. 

Its director, David Beasley, who has just visited the region, said that without immediate assistance more than half a million people would soon be "knocking on famine's door", with another 800,000 marching towards it. 

He said he was shocked by what he had seen in southern Madagascar – children who were just skin and bones, families eating mud and the fruit of cacti because there was nothing else. 

He called it a silent tragedy in a forgotten location. 

The crisis was being driven by climate change, with drought after drought forcing families to leave their homes, through no fault of their own, Mr Beasley said. 

He said wealthy nations had a moral obligation to help.

Brazil: At the height of the pandemic, civil society is organizing itself against hunger

Via DW Brasil: At the height of the pandemic, civil society is organizing itself against hunger. Excerpt from the Google translation:

"People are to shine, not to starve to death," sings Caetano Veloso in the song Gente. In fact, access to adequate food is a basic, fundamental human right. It is provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and is ensured by the Brazilian Constitution.  

However, according to the latest data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), last September 10.3 million people did not have regular access to food in the country. That is, they were hungry. And the situation has worsened even more in recent months, experts point out, amid the intensification of the covid-19 pandemic and the context of economic crisis. 

For José Graziano da Silva, former director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Brazil is back on the Hunger Map , from where it had officially left in 2014. This means that more than 5% of the population is in a situation of severe food insecurity, without consuming the recommended calories for a healthy and dignified life. 

In the midst of the pandemic, sad stories and pleas for help multiply on the streets, in the media and on social networks. In view of this, civil society has been organizing itself in different ways to assist the population. Dozens of food collection campaigns, led by different entities and organizations, are in action. 

 Aid falls, food prices rise 

The suspension of R $ 600 emergency aid, paid by the federal government from April to December 2020, has had enormous effects on the population in a situation of social vulnerability. The Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) projects that in August 2020 - with the assistance - 9.5 million Brazilians (4.5% of the population) lived in extreme poverty. In February 2021, the number increased to 27 million people (12.2% of the population). Living in extreme poverty means surviving on R $ 246 per month (R $ 8.20 per day). 

As of April, the emergency aid will be deposited again for four months, but with lower amounts: R $ 150 for families of one person, R $ 250 for families of 2 people or more, or R $ 375 in the case of mothers unmarried. 

In addition to the interruption and reduction of aid, data from the IBGE show that the price of food has increased by more than 15% in the 12 months since the beginning of the pandemic. The number is almost triple inflation, which was 5.2% in the same period.

'Falling off a cliff': Pandemic crippling world's most fragile states, finds report

Via The Guardian: 'Falling off a cliff': pandemic crippling world's most fragile states, finds report. Excerpt:

Thousands could starve in the world’s most fragile states as the pandemic comes on top of existing crises, warns a new report today which found aid workers are deeply pessimistic about the coming year. 

The survey of aid workers by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) found that they believed humanitarian conditions were at their worst in a decade. 

The chief executive of the DEC, Saleh Saeed, said reduced funding could force aid providers to prioritise some populations and services over others. 

“People living in places made perilous by conflict, violence and climate disasters are coping with the coronavirus pandemic as best they can, but the odds are stacked against them. The knock-on effects of the pandemic have crippled economies, making the world’s poorest people even poorer,” said Saeed. 

The report focused on Syria, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan, as well as the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

It said there had been a significant economic impact in all of these countries, but that the direct health impact of the coronavirus had also been underestimated because of insufficient testing capacity. 

Ahmed Khalif, country director for the charity Action Against Hunger in Somalia, said livelihoods had been damaged by drops in crucial livestock exports and remittances sent from the diaspora, coming alongside conflict, locust infestations and drought.

African swine fever mutation spreads in China, sparking new control fears

Via Caixin Global: African Swine Fever Mutation Spreads in China, Sparking New Control Fears. Excerpt:

Chinese scientists have discovered a milder but harder-to-detect mutation of the African swine fever virus has been spreading in China, posing new challenges to the prevention and control of the highly infectious disease which swept the country in 2018. 

Researchers from the Harbin Veterinary Institute said they had documented new strains of the disease and warned that the mutations might already be prevalent among pig populations in fields, a report published in the academic journal Science China Life Sciences on Feb. 24. It confirmed a similar report published by the Military Veterinary Institute early last month. 

Compared to pigs infected with classic African swine fever, animals infected with the new strains experience a longer period of disease, milder symptoms and ones which are more easily misdiagnosed. Failure to diagnose contaminated pigs at an early stage can lead to mass infection in farms and irrecoverable loss, multiple pig farming industry insiders said. 

With milder clinical symptoms, the new strains are more difficult to detect in livestock while remaining highly transmissible, making early diagnosis more challenging, they said. While not dangerous to humans, the disease can cause up to 100% fatality in pigs, leading to severe economic losses to the pig sector. 

China consumes more than half of the world's pork production. An estimated 30% of Chinese pork production is by small-scale farmers who may lack the expertise or funds to protect their animals from the disease, according to health experts. 

There are no commercialized vaccines or specialized treatment for the virus. Controlling the pandemic relies on swift diagnosis and extermination of infected animals. A swine fever virus vaccine developed by the Harbin Veterinary Institute is currently in its second stage of clinal trials. 

Multiple industry professionals told Caixin, speaking on condition of anonymity, that although there is no approved vaccine to date, many pig farms have used “underground vaccines” from unknown sources to mitigate losses. Professionals worry that these unregulated vaccines may cause the virus to mutate, thereby exacerbating the crisis.

World Food Programme says it needs $6.8 billion over next six months to avert famine

Via Reuters: World Food Programme says needs $6.8 billion over next six months to avert famine. Excerpt:

LONDON (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will need to raise$6.8 billion over the next six months to avert famine amid the COVID-19 crisis, the agency said on Tuesday. 

The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for its efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, said it had so far raised $1.6 billion. 

“We’ve got a lot more money to raise to make certain we avert famine,” David Beasley, executive director of the WFP, said at a conference organised by the U.N’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). 

Beaseley noted that 7 million people had died from hunger this year as the COVID-19 pandemic, which could double hunger worldwide, claimed a further 1 million lives. 

“If we don’t sort out COVID, (the) hunger death rate could be 3, 4, 5 times that,” said Beaseley. 

The Rome-based WFP says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year, and that one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat. 

After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise again since 2016, driven by the twin scourges of conflict and climate change.

World Food Programme awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Via the World Food Programme: World Food Programme awarded Nobel Peace Prize Statement by WFP Executive Director David Beasley.

ROME – The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Programme (WFP) is a humbling, moving recognition of the work of WFP staff who lay their lives on the line every day to bring food and assistance for close to 100 million hungry children, women and men across the world. People whose lives are often brutally torn apart by instability, insecurity and conflict. 

Every one of the 690 million hungry people in the world today has the right to live peacefully and without hunger. Today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has turned the global spotlight on them and on the devastating consequences of conflict. Climate shocks and economic pressures have further compounded their plight. And now, a global pandemic with its brutal impact on economies and communities, is pushing millions more to the brink of starvation. 

The Nobel Peace Prize is not WFP’s alone.  We work closely with government, organizations and private sector partners whose passion for helping the hungry and vulnerable equals ours. We could not possibly help anyone without them. We are an operational agency and the daily work of our staff each day is driven by our core values of integrity, humanity and inclusion.  

Where there is conflict, there is hunger. And where there is hunger, there is often conflict. Today is a reminder that food security, peace and stability go together. Without peace, we cannot achieve our global goal of zero hunger; and while there is hunger, we will never have a peaceful world.

Yemen facing hidden cholera crisis as COVID-19 cases set to peak in coming weeks

Via ReliefWeb, an Oxfam news release: Yemen facing hidden cholera crisis as COVID cases set to peak in coming weeks. Excerpt:

Thousands of people in Yemen could be dying from undetected cases of cholera because COVID-19 has overwhelmed the country's health facilities and people are too frightened to seek treatment for fear of the virus, Oxfam said today. 

The number of coronavirus cases in Yemen is likely to peak in the coming weeks while the heaviest rains are expected in August which could deepen a hidden cholera crisis. 

The numbers of recorded suspected cholera cases since March have shown an abnormal decrease. In the first three months of 2020, there were more than 100,000 suspected cases of cholera in Yemen but this dropped by 50 per cent in the second three months. Last year, the numbers increased by 70 per cent in the second quarter because it coincides with the start of rainy season.  

It means it’s likely there are already tens of thousands of people suffering with undetected and untreated cases of cholera. According to the WHO, half of those diagnosed with cholera will die from the disease if its left untreated but with timely and adequate treatment, that will remain below 1%.  

The first case of coronavirus was reported in the country in April and although officially only 1644 cases had been recorded by 22 July, the actual figure is likely to be far higher because of underreporting and a lack of testing facilities. The UK’s Department for International Development has estimated it could already be as high as one million. 

Muhsin Siddiquey, Oxfam’s Yemen Country Director said: “Yemen is on course for a truly horrific catastrophe as both cholera and COVID could peak in the coming weeks. Yemenis desperately need an end to the fighting which has destroyed health facilities and left communities more vulnerable to the virus. 

“Rather than show that Yemen has cholera and COVID under control, the low official numbers demonstrate the exact opposite. A lack of working health facilities and people too scared to get treatment mean that the numbers suffering from these diseases are being vastly under recorded.” 

Yemen has also been hit by the economic fall out from the coronavirus. A slump in remittances and even tighter restrictions on vital food imports mean there have been huge increases in the price of food and millions of Yemenis are being pushed deeper into a hunger crisis.  

Compounding this is a lack of funding to meet people’s needs. Only two per cent of funding needed to provide clean water and sanitation to stop the spread of COVID has been given. Overall, there’s less than a third of the funding for Yemen now than at the same point last year even though COVID-19 has exacerbated what was already the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster.

12,000 people per day could die from COVID-19 linked hunger by end of year, potentially more than the disease, warns Oxfam

Via ReliefWeb, a new release from Oxfam: 12,000 people per day could die from Covid-19 linked hunger by end of year, potentially more than the disease, warns Oxfam. Excerpt:

Eight of the biggest food and beverage companies pay out $18 billion to shareholders as new epicentres of hunger emerge across the globe 

As many as 12,000 people could die per day by the end of the year as a result of hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than could die from the disease, warned Oxfam in a new briefing published today. The global observed daily mortality rate for COVID-19 reached its highest recorded point in April 2020 at just over 10,000 deaths per day. 

‘The Hunger Virus’ reveals how 122 million more people could be pushed to the brink of starvation this year as a result of the social and economic fallout from the pandemic including through mass unemployment, disruption to food production and supplies, and declining aid. 

Oxfam’s Interim Executive Director Chema Vera said: “COVID-19 is the last straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers. Meanwhile, those at the top are continuing to make a profit: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders since January even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe - ten times more than the UN says is needed to stop people going hungry.” 

The briefing reveals the world’s ten worst hunger hotspots, places such as Venezuela and South Sudan where the food crisis is most severe and getting worse as a result of the pandemic. It also highlights emerging epicentres of hunger – middle income countries such as India, South Africa, and Brazil – where millions of people who were barely managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic. For example: 

Brazil: Millions of poor workers, with little in the way of savings or benefits to fall back on, lost their incomes as a result of lockdown. Only 10 percent of the financial support promised by the federal government had been distributed by late June with big business favored over workers and smaller more vulnerable companies.  

India: Travel restrictions left farmers without vital migrant labour at the peak of the harvest season, forcing many to leave their crops in the field to rot. Traders have also been unable to reach tribal communities during the peak harvest season for forest products, depriving up to 100 million people of their main source of income for the year. 

Yemen: Remittances dropped by 80 percent – or $253 million - in the first four months of 2020 as a result of mass job losses across the Gulf. Borders and supply route closures have led to food shortages and food price spikes in the country which imports 90 percent of its food.  

Sahel: Restrictions on movement have prevented herders from driving their livestock to greener pastures for feeding, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people. Just 26 percent of the $2.8bn needed to respond to COVID-19 in the region has been pledged. 

Kadidia Diallo, a female milk producer in Burkina Faso, told Oxfam: “COVID-19 is causing us a lot of harm. Giving my children something to eat in the morning has become difficult. We are totally dependent on the sale of milk, and with the closure of the market we can’t sell the milk anymore. If we don’t sell milk, we don't eat.”