💉 The US: championing climate retreat; The US: championing new colonialism; The US: Let the world burn
#582 | A new drug for TB arrives; Bird flu has already arrived, maybe; New spiders are dead on arrival almost
Hello, and welcome back to the Kable for the first Friday of the rest of this year. As regular readers might recall, The Kable goes into hibernation for the last fortnight of the year, which is now only 5 more weeks away. But we will give you enough reading from now till then to tide you over when we’re gone.
Beginning this week with the Africa CDC’s ambitious attempt at creating a living dashboard to map the continent’s health supply chain. If this does come to fruition, wow!
In a boost to local manufacturing in Africa, South Africa’s Biovac has opened a new vaccine lab in Cape Town. This new lab will allow Biovac to produce vaccines from the early stages of product development through to manufacturing and final formulation.
Mpox continues to rage in Africa. And the rest of the world continues to ignore it. Europe, at least, may not be able to ignore it for much longer. There now is community transmission of mpox clade 1b in several countries in Europe. All locally acquired with no connection to countries with known 1b mpox transmission.
The WHO and Bayer have extended their two-decade partnership to 2030, pledging continued medicine donations and funding to combat three major neglected tropical diseases: Chagas, sleeping sickness, and pork tapeworm infection. The renewed deal supports WHO’s newly formed Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases department as it works to scale up free treatment in endemic countries.
As Japan does, so does South Korea. Because the flu is contagious, silly! Japan re-introduced Covid-level emergency protocols not to long ago, thanks to an unprecedented surge in “flu” cases. Looks like Seoul may have to follow suit.
And finally, for those with a dread of spiders. Bad news. Researchers discovered a new species of trapdoor spider in California. And their paper says there are “hundreds of thousands” of species yet to be discovered.
Stories Of The Week
All your data are belong to us! The US has a “plan” to revive its global aid program and it involves tying future PEPFAR funding to a sweeping data-for-aid demand that forces recipient countries to share pathogen samples and genetic data within five days of detection. And to keep doing so for 25 years. On paper, it’s about disease surveillance; in practice, it threatens to blow up the WHO’s nascent Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system, designed to ensure poorer nations aren’t just sources of raw biological intelligence for richer ones. The deal offers fleeting financial relief - lab salaries, some equipment, a one-year stipend for epidemiologists - but asks for decades of compliance. As countries in the global South are familiar with, this is just a 21st-century update of the old imperial playbook: extract resources under the banner of aid, call it partnership, and leave others paying the bill once Washington walks away.
(Health Policy Watch)
Breakthroughs
A new TB drug shows teeth. A new compound, CMX410, may finally outsmart tuberculosis by disabling a bacterial enzyme essential for its survival, even in drug-resistant strains. Developed through the Gates-backed TB Drug Accelerator using last year’s Nobel-winning “click chemistry,” the molecule binds irreversibly to its target, making resistance far less likely. Early animal data suggest it’s potent, precise, and safe enough to combine with existing drugs, raising hopes for shorter, more effective treatments. It’s still preclinical, but if the results hold, CMX410 could mark the first real reinvention of TB therapy in half a century.
(Nature)
Bottom line
Burn, burn, burn. The latest UN report says the world is barreling toward 2.8°C of warming, with the US once again stepping off the ride, having already withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and now disowning the science entirely. While the EU doubles down with a 90% reduction target and China edges toward an earlier emissions peak, Washington has chosen denial as policy, insisting climate accords “unfairly burden” America. The irony, of course, is that the planet doesn’t negotiate exemptions. The US still emits more per capita than almost anyone and bankrolls fossil expansion even as wildfires, floods and heatwaves devour the evidence of its inaction.
Under current policies, global greenhouse gas emissions hit a record 57.7 gigatons in 2024, driven by deforestation, wildfires and rising fossil fuel output, trends the US continues to feed while rejecting UN findings. The world’s top economies, including the US, are falling short of their own 2030 targets, and fossil fuel subsidies still dwarf education spending. Despite mounting scientific consensus that the 1.5°C threshold will be breached within a decade, the US has opted out of collective climate governance, requesting its data be removed from UN analyses. Because science? Eff it, we are Murrica... we don’t need no effing science.
(UNEP)
Burn the whole damn planet. If more confirmation were needed of how dire the prognosis is: 2025 is on track to be one of the three hottest years ever recorded, with global temperatures already averaging 1.42°C above pre-industrial levels. The WMO’s latest State of the Global Climate Update warns that breaching the 1.5°C threshold is now “virtually impossible” to avoid in the short term, a reality made worse by rising greenhouse gas concentrations, record ocean heat, and shrinking polar ice. Each year above that limit, says the UN, will deepen inequality, damage economies, and make recovery harder, yet US climate denialism and political retreat have left the world’s biggest historical emitter standing still as the planet warms past its safe operating zone.
The data tell a relentless story. The last 11 years have been the warmest in recorded history, with the Arctic and Antarctic losing record volumes of ice and the world’s glaciers continuing their steady retreat. Oceans, which absorb 90% of excess heat, are hotter than ever, fuelling floods, wildfires, and mass displacement across continents. While early warning systems and climate services have improved, nearly 40% of countries still lack basic multi-hazard frameworks, a gap that science cooperation could help close, if not for the political choices slowing it down.
(WMO)
Long reads
Mother Nature, run from me. Since it is obvious that the climate fight will not see any participation from the biggest offender, Nature has a guide on how to still fight the good fight.
(Nature)
One drug to treat them all. One class of drugs that really shot to fame, thanks to Covid, is antibodies. Nature, once again, has a good read on how they can be used to treat HIV and the inevitable bird flu.
(Nature)
Inevitable? Bird flu isn’t inevitable. True that. Inevitable is generally used for things likely to happen in the future. But according to studies, bird flu is here already and spreading asymptomatically.
(Gavi)
Eat the rich. Or, at least, tax them. Health Policy Watch talks about how the rich made a killing off Covid. And the poor, well, who gives a damn?
(Health Policy Watch)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn’t want you to see this.