💉Getting WASTEWISE in Africa; Fridge-free vaccines break new ground; Veggies? Not for me
#617 | Making America unhealthy again; Ebola continues its rampage; How fast can you swim?
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable.
We’re once again beginning with Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is not yet showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, it is still gaining speed. At last count, authorities have reported 4,665 cases with 2,184 deaths. One of these deaths happened in a province that doesn’t have any reported cases yet because an infected person travelled there from another province. A new study says this outbreak was likely caused via transmission from animals while the speed at which it is spreading is sparking concerns of a mutation. Allaying some fears, the WHO said earlier reports that suggested the outbreak may have begun four months before being reported are untrue and it only started three months before the first report.
We don’t blame the Africa CDC for being off its acronym game for a while but, even if for only a while, they were back at it this week with WASTEWISE. Which stands for the Wastewater Molecular and Genomic Surveillance in African Megacities project, a partnership with the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) and the European Union to strengthen wastewater and environmental surveillance in DRC, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
In continuing geological devastation for the Andean region, barely six weeks after a brace of earthquakes struck Venezuela, Colombia too experienced a 7.4 magnitude earthquake earlier this week, its largest this millennium, that has already killed over 250 people with more than 300 still missing.
Over in Palestine, Israeli actions are getting so deplorable, even Reuters has started calling them out. Like this piece about “settlers” diverting water that would’ve irrigated Palestinian crops to fill up a pool instead. The UN says the “settler” siege of the West Bank is a new low as if there are no more depths that they will plumb. Another UN report says since the imaginary ceasefire began, the rate at which buildings in Gaza have naturally started getting destroyed has increased by 10%. And MSF says Israel is blocking the entry of healthcare supplies into Gaza. Pretty sure Israel thinks that is the moral thing to do.
For a long time, around the world, we’ve seen the benefits of childhood vaccinations. And the success stories are many. Whether it is the dramatic under-5 mortality decline over the EPI era in Bangladesh, the near-elimination of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis as major killers in countries with sustained DTP coverage, the near extinction of polio, the actual global eradication of smallpox. Till very recently, even the massive reductions in case numbers and mortality rates of measles, especially in the US. Over the past, let’s say ten years or so, there has been rampant misinfo and disinfo about vaccines, and lately it is US health authorities contributing to it the most. No surprise then that they decided to “overhaul” vaccine schedules over there, in an announcement accompanied by a whole lot of outright lies because that is what they definitely specialise in. Unless we missed vaccine doses that are as big as the size of a bottle of soda. But the US dispensation is all in on science. And so, they will no longer fund research on the health effects of public policy.
In Australia, bird flu has made its way to Tasmania as well, making it the sixth Australian state to be affected. So yeah, bird flu is all over Australia.
And finally, July 2026 was the second-hottest July of all time. The good news though is that it was also most likely the coolest July of the rest of your lives till a nuclear meltdown gets us all.
Before we dive into the stories of the week...
The Kable is proud to be a Media Partner to Pharmaconex - the largest and most influential pharmaceutical exhibition and conference in Africa.
Like The Kable, Pharmaconex shines a spotlight on the capability story in Africa and is committed to building a symbiotic community of industry leaders, changemakers and regulators to share knowledge, forge partnerships and move the industry forward.
Use this link to register for your free pass.
Stories Of The Week
Cold comfort. Usually, stories about trials are reserved for the Breakthroughs section in The Kable. But this story is not usual. Because it is about one of global health’s least glamorous and most stubborn bottlenecks, the cold chain. And news that might finally clear that bottleneck. Around half of vaccines are reportedly wasted globally each year, with temperature failures among the culprits; meanwhile, roughly one in five children in Africa remains unvaccinated.
A new tetanus-diphtheria vaccine formulation has now cleared its first human trial without refrigeration, staying stable for up to two years at 30°C while producing immune responses comparable to existing vaccines. The science is sugar, actually: trehalose, a sugar found in organisms that can survive extreme drying, including so-called “resurrection plants”. In the trial, the formulation used trehalose to stabilise the vaccine’s antigens, helping preserve their structure and potency when exposed to heat. Participants given the heat-stable formulation developed antibody responses comparable to those receiving the standard vaccine, an important early indication that taking the fridge out of the equation need not mean compromising the immune response.
This is definitely a solution for places where unreliable electricity, difficult roads and limited storage can turn perfectly good vaccines into expensive waste. You know, rural Africa, parts of urban conflict zones, other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
It’s still early days. The next, larger trial will determine whether the promise survives contact with real-world deployment, particularly in places where temperatures routinely exceed 30°C. But if it does, fridge-free vaccines could do more than cut wastage and costs: they could expand the reach of routine immunisation, make outreach campaigns easier and strengthen health systems that currently spend an inordinate amount of effort simply keeping vaccines cold.
(eClinicalMedicine)
Bottom line
Who ate my greens? Parents all over the world through time eternal have been telling their children to finish their veggies before getting to their dessert. But parents of the future may no longer need to do that. Because there may be no veggies in the future. Partly because we’re eating, have been eating, too few veggies. And also because we’re eating too few kindsof veggies. A new analysis of vegetable biodiversity finds that industrial agriculture has steadily narrowed what reaches our plates, even as the world consumes around 40% fewer vegetables than recommended. That is bad news for nutrition, but also for climate resilience: as traditional varieties and wild relatives disappear, so do genes that could help crops tolerate heat, drought and other increasingly awkward features of the 21st century. And, of course, the problem is particularly acute in the Global South, where some of the vegetables being neglected may be precisely the ones that make most sense. African spider plant, for instance, is nutrient-dense and relatively climate-resilient, yet its genetic resources remain poorly conserved. Researchers say the answer is to grow more veggies and more different veggies and also eat them before we all run out of veggies.
(PNAS)
You’re gonna need a bigger boat. So you think marine heatwaves are a problem for coral reefs, fish and other things that, inconveniently, live in the sea? A new review in Nature Sustainability argues you should broaden the diagnosis: unusually warm oceans can intensify storms, fuel harmful algal blooms, reduce seafood supplies and disrupt livelihoods, with the damage eventually showing up in human health. And for coastal communities across Africa and other places where fisheries are tied closely to nutrition and income, that chain reaction is more than academic. Because what happens after the fish disappear or the coastline becomes harder make a living from? Food-safety risks from contaminated seafood, displacement and injury from stronger storms. And worse, anxiety, grief and depression among communities whose livelihoods and identities are tied to the ocean. And also, sharks. So many sharks.
(Nature Sustainability)
Long reads
Make, make, make in Africa. Only one piece here this week, a blog post from Unitaid that sets out to prove that medicines made in Africa are as effective as medicines made anywhere else. And for that, you need the capability to conduct studies on these medicines. And this post is about four Africa-based organisations that are developing those capabilities.
(Unitaid)