💉 Ebola under control in DRC; Senegal says hold my beer; Don't consume cough syrup in India
#579 | Tobacco isn't vanishing anytime soon; Neither is dirty air; Nor, for that matter, is AMR
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable for another short and sweet catch-up.
As everybody knows by now, we now have a “peace” deal in Palestine that should, in theory, put a pause to the relentless genocide being perpetrated by Israel for more than 7 decades. As this Onion headline reminds us, peace is always a one-sided thing with Israel. As glad as we’re for any relief this deal brings to the people of Palestine, this is your periodic reminder that BDS has to continue. Even if this ceasefire holds and peace is achieved, justice and reparations are still due. Apropos of nothing, the UNRWA and The Lancet released a study this week that says 16% of children in Gaza are acutely malnourished.
Over in Africa, the Ebola outbreak in DRC seems to have stabilised with no new cases being reported, says the WHO.
However, as if Africa didn’t already have enough outbreaks to deal with, Senegal has now reported an outbreak of Rift Valley fever with 87 confirmed cases and 10 deaths.
In other Africa news, in less than two weeks, the fourth edition of the International Conference on Public Health in Africa (CPHIA) opens its doors in Durban. Registrations are now open and if you want to be part of the Make In Africa story, we really don’t see how you can not be at this event.
Also this week, the Nobel Prize declarations are on. As always, it begin with the Nobel for medicine which went to a trio of researchers for their work on peripheral immune tolerance, a process that is key to organ transplants and treatment of autoimmune diseases.
In Denmark, chicken may be off the menu for a while. A bird flu outbreak at a farm resulted in 150,000 chickens migrating to that great big coop in the sky. Against their will.
In encouraging news, CEPI is funding research into an all-in-one vaccine for various kinds of filoviruses, including Marburg and the Zaire and Sudan strains of Ebola.
In a bucking of a trend, Eli Lilly is pumping in $1 billion for contract manufacturing in India.
And finally, in India, it is cough syrups to the fore again. The latest instance of child deaths that began in Rajasthan and then spread to Madhya Pradesh has resulted in a manslaughter probe. Regulators have declared three cough syrups toxic and makers of all three have been shuttered, with the owner of one even being arrested. In the immediate aftermath of a similar story not too long ago, similar actions were taken and then, crickets. We don’t expect much else now either.
Stories Of The Week
Kick that butt. So yes, the world’s finally kicking the habit. Well, sort of. Global tobacco use has fallen from 1.38 billion people in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2024, a 27% drop. Yet one in five adults still lights up (or vapes, or pouches, or heats), proving nicotine’s staying power. WHO’s new data shows the industry has simply rebranded addiction. Over 100 million people now vape, including 15 million children - kids who are, on average, nine times more likely to puff on e-cigarettes than adults. Women are leading the quit race, hitting the 30% reduction target in 2020, five years early. Men? Not so much. They still make up four out of five tobacco users worldwide. The biggest progress came from South-East Asia, where male smoking rates halved. Europe, however, now tops the charts - women there smoke more than anywhere else. The WHO wants the world to tighten controls, tax harder, regulate e-cigs, and stop the industry from selling addiction as innovation. Because while the world smokes less, Big Tobacco’s new frontier is vaping youth - and, as the data indicates, they’re inhaling the message just fine.
(WHO)
Dirty money, dirty air, deadly priorities. Development banks say they’re fighting pollution but they’re still writing cheques to the problem. In 2023, funding for fossil fuel-based energy projects jumped 80% to $9.5 billion, even as toxic air killed over 8 million people. Meanwhile, direct support for clean air projects fell 20% to a measly $3.7 billion - about 1% of global aid. Fossil fuel subsidies worldwide still dwarf clean-air spending by a factor of 1,400, totalling $7 trillion. Sub-Saharan Africa, home to some of the world’s dirtiest air, saw a 91% collapse in clean-air funding. Remember this data when your government officials says they are pledging to halve air pollution by 2040 because they’re still bankrolling the fuels that cause it. As the Clean Air Fund put it, “You can’t build healthy societies on dirty air.” But apparently, you can still fund them.
(Clean Air Fund)
Bottom line
Broken smoking shell. That’s what our planet is. Earth just failed another health check. Scientists say we’ve now blown past seven of nine planetary boundaries, the latest being ocean acidification, as the seas absorb so much CO₂ they’re turning into carbon soup. Marine ecosystems are destabilising, corals are dissolving, and billion-dollar fisheries are next on the drip. The verdict from the Potsdam Institute: more than three-quarters of Earth’s life-support systems are outside the “safe zone.” Only the ozone layer and atmospheric aerosols remain (barely) stable - the former thanks to global cooperation, the latter mostly by accident.
(Planetary Health Check)
Here comes the sun. Solar power has officially gone from idealism to realism. A new University of Surrey study finds it’s now the cheapest source of electricity on the planet, costing as little as £0.02 per kilowatt-hour in sunny countries - less than coal, gas, or even wind. Global capacity has doubled since 2020, hitting 1.5 terawatts in 2024, and the crash in battery prices (down 89% since 2010) means solar-plus-storage now rivals gas for reliability. The only catch? The grid can’t keep up. Places like California and China are already wasting solar energy because they can’t move it fast enough. Still, researchers say with smarter grids, improved tech, and policy that doesn’t flake, solar can power the low-carbon future whether politicians are ready for it or not.
(Energy and Environment Materials)
Long reads
AMR? Who has time for AMR? Once again, not a read but a series of charts from Nature. This one, with just five charts, tracks the scary future that antimicrobial resistance portends. Thankfully, we will be dead of dirty air and cough syrups long before we really need to worry about AMR.
(Nature)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn’t want you to see this.