Hello, and welcome back to The Kable.
For those not in the know, there is an outbreak of Bundibugyo Ebola which has affected three African countries so far.
One of them, Uganda, has announced next stage of clinical trials for two vaccine candidates. Separately, CEPI is also advancing trials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The newest country affected by the outbreak, Kenya, has already seen case counts double in one week, after a close contact of the first patient also tested positive. Testing of nearly 300 other contacts has thankfully returned negative results. Kenya has nevertheless introduced new legal measures to improve surveillance, prevent transmission and regulate infection management, in a move that social sentiment doesn’t seem to be very welcoming of just yet.
In Congo meanwhile, cases have reached 9,277 with 4,478 deaths and the outbreak has reportedly spread to a new province as well, this one bordering the Central African Republic. The sad corollary to what is Congo’s largest Ebola outbreak ever is how mothers are now too scared to take their kids for basic preventive care, even as cholera cases continue to spiral upwards.
If Congo has been longest-running humanitarian crisis of all time, Sudan is possibly the most under-reported one, thanks to all the dirhams buying up favourable media, we guess. Conflict, displacement, drought and a lack of funding are all combining to drive up famine in Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan. And okay, maybe drought is not something we can do much about (Editor: we can) but funding is needed only because of displacement brought about by the “conflict.” And the conflict is not internal. The whole world knows who it is funded by, and why. And as if one external player wasn’t enough, other Sudanese neighbours want their gold too.
Speaking of cholera and “conflict,” Yemen continues to see a rise in both, thanks to the other wannabe imperialist in the region.
In a year of massive natural disasters, we had one more when a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Panama late last week, with more than 100 aftershocks.
Oh and the Russian plague? The WHO doesn’t think it is plague... there are no more plague reports anywhere anymore. Maybe it was just pneumonia after all.
The UN finally adopted a pandemic preparedness declaration. It wasn’t unanimous though. There were three holdouts: Argentina, Israel, and the US.
In somewhat of a departure for The Kable, we have excellent news. Mauritius has become the first country in the world to reduce its number of people with type 2 diabetes - by 11% for men and 16% for women from 2009 to 2021.
Every so often, the most slappable face in pharma keeps surfacing to remind us of his existence. Usually when he does, it is because of something unsavoury. And that is the case this week too with authorities in the US saying Martin Shkreli has violated a lifetime pharma ban.
Wellcome released its latest study on people’s perception of science and health - The Wellcome Global Monitor 2026. And global trust in science has fallen below pre-pandemic levels, especially among the poor, with Africa and West Asia showing the steepest declines.
And finally, no more leap second. We have a leap hour instead. And it will be something future generations will have to deal with. Well into the future.
Stories Of The Week
Please, sir, may I have some more? Another week, another SDG looking like it’s gonna get skipped. This week it is SDG 2: Zero Hunger on the chopping block. Because hunger has actually worsened in 32 countries since 2018, according to the 2026 Global Hunger Index. The global score reached 18.1, compared with 17.6 in 2018, interrupting the improvement recorded since 2000. Oh, higher scores mean more severe hunger.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest regional score, at 27.5, classified as serious. Seven of the eight countries assessed as having alarming hunger levels are African. And it might be even worse because the assessments for Burundi, Sudan and South Sudan are only provisional since there isn’t enough to calculate complete scores.
Somalia has the highest calculated country score, at 47.0. Nigeria recorded the largest score increase worldwide, reaching 34.3 compared with 28.2 in 2018, close to the alarming threshold of 35. However, there were substantial improvements elsewhere on the continent. Uganda’s score fell to 20.7 compared with 28.7 in 2018, although it remains in the serious category. Togo’s score reached 17.6 compared with 24.3, placing it in the moderate category.
In South America, Venezuela’s score improved massively to 8.9 compared with 16.7 in 2018, placing it in the low-hunger category. Bolivia’s worsened to 14.2 compared with 12.2. In the Caribbean, Haiti’s score of 34.4 is fast approaching the alarming threshold. Across the wider Latin America and Caribbean region though, the regional hunger score has been classified as low but child stunting has increased since 2018, including in Argentina and Brazil.
West Asia and North Africa’s regional score worsened to 12.5 compared with 11.9 in 2018. Syria’s score reached 31.5, keeping it in the serious category. Yemen is provisionally classified as alarming: 47.4% of children under five are stunted, while 16.8% are wasted. Provisional classification because there isn’t data available to calculate a national score. But considering that there hasn’t been food (or medicine or other supplies) available in Yemen for years now, we guess the kids aren’t too chuffed about missing data.
South Asia’s score of 23.5 remains serious. Its child wasting rate has worsened since 2018 and stands at 15.8%, the world’s highest. India’s score is 24.1, also serious, but hey, no eggs for kids in school. Nepal has made greater recent progress, with its score reaching 14.5 compared with 18.4 in 2018.
In Southeast Asia, Timor-Leste’s score worsened by 5.2 points since 2018 to reach 32.5, well above the combined East and Southeast Asian score of 8.1. Indonesia and Viet Nam remain in the moderate category, at 14.4 and 11.2 respectively.
On current trajectory, 57 countries will fail to reach low hunger levels by 2030.
(Global Hunger Index)
Call it (in) a day. The WHO says countries will be able to detect and understand emerging health threats within 24 hours. Just wait five years. Because the strategy that the WHO has launched to do this immediate detection thing will take five years to materialise. The agency launched this plan at the World Health Summit this week, hoping that faster detection will help countries contain outbreaks before they develop into larger epidemics.
And the strategy (that word once again) uses an open-source intelligence system which uses artificial intelligence (oooh) to scan public sources for potential threats. That doesn’t sound dystopian at all. But the plan also involves pathogen sequencing through the International Pathogen Surveillance Network, a collaborative surveillance initiative, connecting surveillance across human, animal and environmental health. There will also be a new digital programme to develop secure systems for countries to exchange and analyse data. Hehe.
(WHO)
Bottom line
Turn, turn, turn. Okay but for how much longer? Well, not too much more. Because The Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health says we could all be extinct by the turn of the century. And it has identified 17 reasons why that might be so. Nuclear conflict and malicious use of AI feature in there too. As do antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition, and declining international health aid.
But the biggest threat to continued human existence? Obesity. No pun intended. The Commission said obesity alone could account for 23 billion disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by 2100, way clear of low education with 16 billion DALYs at number 2. Pandemics only featured in at number 12. And funnily enough, climate change comes in only at number 14, followed by air pollution at 15.
(The Lancet)
Silver linings? This one may have a glimmer of good news but seeing as we won’t be around for much longer, does it even matter? The 2026 State of the Climate report, published in BioScience, finds that low-carbon sources supplied roughly 43% of global electricity in 2025. Solar and wind energy consumption grew by approximately 18%. Renewable sources collectively overtook coal in electricity generation for the first time in more than a century.
But here comes the dark cloud to the silver lining that went before. Seven of the 16 climate indicators tracked are nevertheless at record extremes. Fossil fuel consumption actually rose by 0.9% in 2025, and annual energy-related carbon dioxide emissions exceeded 41 billion tonnes for the first time. As much as renewable sources grew, energy demand grew even more.
(BioScience)
Long reads
The meek won’t inherit Earth. Enough has been written about the two-way link between climate change and poverty. And a similar link between drug use and poverty. But research from Nigeria, documented in The Conversation Africa, points that this is actually a trifecta.
(The Conversation)
If your day is gone, and you wanna ride on. Not that we want to link to The Guardian but this is a fascinating investigation into how a cocaine trafficker from the Netherlands became the son-in-law of the president of Sierra Leone. And the drug trade he controls.
(The Guardian)
Get an ad blocker. And finally, if you were wondering how we managed to get through an entire issue of The Kable without once mentioning the scourge of our times, here, an investigation from Citizen Lab on how online ads have been weaponised by Israel.
(Citizen Lab)