💉 AI promises to make cheaper drugs faster; Mapping demand for made-in-Africa vaccines; Conflict makes the world starve
#541 | Climate change makes the world starve too; The emissions aren't stopping; What's the goss with bird flu?
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable for a slightly delayed ringing in of this new festive season with loads of good cheer.
The Africa CDC has released a strategic framework to "strengthen cross-border surveillance, coordination, and information sharing" on the continent. We could've linked to this in the Long reads section below, but this is a long overdue measure for Africa and also heralds one more step in Africa CDC's journey to becoming Africa's premier nodal health agency.
In Rwanda, while the Marburg virus outbreak hasn't been beaten back yet, numbers seem to be stabilising. As of the last update, the country had reported 66 cases, with the health ministry saying they're now moving to weekly updates.
Over in Australia, a report on the government's handling of the pandemic reveals that fewer Australians will be amenable to lockdowns in future pandemics.
Did we say good cheer? Okay then. Based on results from a Phase 3 trial, Japan's Shionigi says its Covid pill succeeds at reducing transmission. You know, to deal with the pandemic that we're still in.
Elsewhere, ostensibly tired of accusations that it is stifling aid operations in Palestine, Israel has passed legislation banning the UNRWA, the principal UN aid agency operating in Palestine. Meanwhile, an Israeli man was bitten by his pet dog, and we believe this is just the spark we need to begin a relentlessly escalating war against all things canine. Dogs, wolves, hyenas... they must all go.
In the Americas, measles is making a bit of a comeback, with PAHO issuing an epidemiological alert. A little over 70% of the 376 confirmed cases have been reported from the US, but please don't vaccinate your kids, Murica.
Speaking of the US, the country also saw its first death from Lassa fever. Five thousand deaths per year in Africa say hi.
And finally, toxic masculinity is indeed real. And you don't have to take our word for it: there is a study to prove it.
Stories Of The Week
Something something undercounting. 2023 saw TB reclaiming its position from Covid as the leading killer of humans worldwide. The WHO released its 2024 Global Tuberculosis Report this week, which saw TB claiming an estimated 1.25 million deaths in 2023, nearly twice as many deaths as HIV/AIDS. Eight countries alone - India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo - accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total case numbers last year. Since we promised you good cheer at the beginning of this Kable, here it is. The number of deaths caused by TB in 2023 was lesser than the corresponding number in 2022. However, the number of people contracting TB rose to 8.2 million, fairly higher than 2022's 7.5 million, and the highest number recorded since the WHO began global TB monitoring in 1995.
(WHO)
Counting? Who's counting? When it comes to bird flu, no one is, apparently. More human cases of bird flu in farm workers have been reported from the US, bringing the total reported human case count in the country to 39. These new cases, reported from Oregon, are in farm workers who travelled from Washington after they reported symptoms while there. We know that one of the mythical aphorisms about doomsday is that it is when pigs will fly. Worryingly, we're a little closer to that reality now because, for the first time ever, a pig has been infected with bird flu. Scientists are concerned that this could make it easier for a bird flu-regular flu hybrid that can more easily spread among humans. A vaccine should help though, right? Sure, if one were to be available anytime soon. But the consensus is that that is unlikely. But we promised you good cheer. So here it is. A new study says bird flu isolate from infected humans is transmissible and lethal in animals. Elsewhere, it seems birds are not spared from bird flu either, with scientists in Europe saying bird flu is spreading in the EU at a faster rate than last year.
(US CDC, Koin, AP, Scientific American, Scientific American, Nature, Reuters)
May a pox be upon you. So mpox is over, is it? Because where is the wall-to-wall coverage for a disease that has sparked emergency declarations from two health agencies? The Africa CDC definitely doesn't believe we're past mpox. In its most recent media briefing, the agency asked for more resources to deal with the ongoing outbreak. At the same briefing, the Africa CDC called attention to the developing situation in Uganda, where an outbreak that began with one case in a prison has quickly gone up to 61 cases. The agency also presented pan-African data to reveal that mpox cases on the continent have surged 500% year-on-year. Outside Africa, Britain has become the newest country to report a case of the new Clade 1b variant. In a couple of moves, the WHO has activated its Global Health Emergency Corps for the first time and also listed more mpox diagnostic tests for emergency use. As has been our motif this week though, we won't leave you without some good cheer here too. Good cheer in the form of a study that says the virus that causes mpox is getting better at spreading among humans. Yay.
(Al Jazeera, Health Policy Watch, Reuters, Reuters, WHO, WHO, Nature)
Breakthroughs
Who needs researchers when we have AI? A biotech firm, Iambic Therapeutics, has just introduced a game-changer in AI for drug development called Enchant, a model designed to drastically reduce the time and money it takes to bring new drugs to market. Trained on "mountains of pre-clinical data", Enchant can predict a drug’s performance before it even reaches human trials. This accuracy apparently leaves previous models in the dust, potentially halving development costs by spotting winners (and losers) earlier. While other AI tools focus on molecular structure alone, Enchant goes a step further, tackling the full range of drug properties, from absorption to toxicity. The result? A new benchmark in making drug discovery faster, smarter, and a whole lot cheaper.
(Iambic)
Bottom line
Hotter planet, lesser food. A new report presented by the Lancet Countdown warns that climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, is bringing dangerously high temperatures, drought, and food insecurity, creating a cascade of health issues. In 2023, the hottest year on record, people faced 50 more days of dangerous heat than they would have without climate change, with heat-related deaths in seniors up 167% compared to the 1990s. Outdoor workers and athletes are also feeling the heat, losing billions of potential labour hours to extreme temperatures. Droughts have worsened food insecurity, impacting millions, while heavy rains and floods have brought additional health risks.
(Lancet Countdown)
Emissions keep on emitting. In the latest edition of Climate Alarm Bells – Now Louder Than Ever, global climate pledges are set to slash emissions by a grand total of... 2.6% by 2030, or about 40% less than needed to keep the Paris Agreement alive, according to the UNFCCC. With greenhouse gases hitting record highs in 2023 and Earth’s natural carbon sponges barely absorbing CO2, it’s like we’re adding fuel to the fire quite literally. This climate crisis isn’t waiting, hasn't been waiting, for us to get our act together. If our leaders don’t hit the fast-forward button on serious climate action at least now, we’re headed for more than just “record-breaking” news.
(UNFCCC)
Why don't they eat cake? Because bread is increasingly off the menu. Maybe not everywhere, but according to a new report from the FAO and the WFP, many places around the world are hungry and getting hungrier. Five hunger hotspots - Haiti, Mali, Palestine, South Sudan and Sudan - are where the agencies proclaim hundreds of thousands of people are likely to fall to "catastrophic hunger." And for a change, this is not down to climate change. It is plain old conflict driving this.
(FAO)
Long reads
Making in Africa. A brilliant piece in SciDev on how Africa could become first in line for mpox vaccines. The simple solution: make in Africa.
(SciDev)
The whys and the hows of making in Africa. If business interests are what have precluded the possibility of making vaccines in Africa till now, well, the Africa CDC has an answer. The agency has launched a report highlighting the market scape and scope for African vaccine manufacturing.
(Africa CDC)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn't want you to see this.