💉 The world is hungry still; Can't kill malaria? Poison your blood; Climate change and WW4

#572 | Hold on, don't breathe; Fighting AMR with viruses; Trust in vaccines remains solid

Hello, and welcome back to The Kable, in a world which is increasingly looking like it is destined for a human- and/or AI-influenced implosion not too far into the distant future.

And if we believe we've made any sort of progress on any front whatsoever in the past however many years, how about the fact that 12 African countries are dealing with outbreaks of cholera right now?

How about the fact that multiple observers are now saying that famine is now playing out in Gaza, even by excruciatingly technical standards? And one in two mothers in Gaza are malnourished, only for the New York Times to say their children are dying due to pre-existing causes? Even the WHO says malnutrition in Gaza is at critical levels. And The Lancet has a death toll for Gaza from Israeli aggression. A little under 450,000, which The Lancet admits is most likely an undercount.

Talking of progress, this week, not one, not two, but three Indian drugmakers are recalling products in the US, due to manufacturing issues.

In the UK, they've just passed regulation to allow bedside production of personalised therapies, and they're also mulling a proposal to allow patients faster access to new medical devices.

Depressed? Why don't you just smile? Didn't work? How about some lemon balm then? A study says that may not work either. This study, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, reviewed 64 commonly-used "anti-depressants" and found that the vast majority of them do next to nothing. The only good thing is they don't seem to make the depression worse.

And finally, tomato-potato. A combination that goes in many Indian foods. Not surprising when you discover that potatoes evolved from an ancestor of tomatoes millions of years ago.

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Before we dive into the stories of the week…

The Kable is proud to be Editorial Partner to Pharmaconex—Africa’s most influential hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing across the MEA region.

Like The Kable, Pharmaconex puts the spotlight on the pharma story in Africa and is committed to building a thriving community for industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers to share knowledge, forge partnerships, and move the sector forward.

Register now for free access to the event—and to receive your digital copy of Emerging Frontiers, our annual report on Africa’s biopharma future, launching this September at Pharmaconex Egypt.

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Stories Of The Week

Donors ghost global health. Again. Health aid is on track to drop to its lowest point in over a decade, with the WHO projecting a 40% decline in official development assistance (ODA) for health by 2025, down from over $25 billion in 2023 to just $15 billion. This decline, driven by donor cuts from the US and Europe, threatens to destabilise already fragile health systems in low-income countries, where over 40% of health spending relies on out-of-pocket payments. With disease outbreaks looming and poverty risks rising, experts that Devex spoke to are urging governments to ramp up domestic health investment through tools like blended finance, better tax collection, and debt restructuring. The same experts also warn that current solutions are far too small to meet the scale of the crisis.
(Devex)

Blood suckers, beware! We really didn’t want to include this story because of how the drug in question was peddled by a certain orange someone five years ago… but here we are. A large field trial in Kenya has shown that ivermectin, a cheap antiparasitic once falsely hyped as a Covid cure, can reduce malaria incidence by 26% by making human blood lethal to mosquitoes. While some researchers are calling it a breakthrough, others say the effect is too modest to justify further trials. The approach shows promise, especially for school-age children who fall through the net (literally), but concerns remain about its scalability, ethical viability, and exclusion of vulnerable groups like pregnant women and toddlers. The WHO isn’t ready to endorse the strategy just yet, but for the researchers, the results mark a proof of concept years in the making.
(NEJM)

And then there were four. Four? What four? Four key issues facing us when it comes to climate. And it is the UNEP Frontiers Report 2025 that lays them bare. Ancient microbes thawing from melting glaciers, toxic legacy pollutants stirred by floods, ageing dams exacerbating drought impacts, and the rising climate burden on older populations. And these are no longer a distant, hypothetical future. Download the report and read it. Depending on how old you are, and how close you stay to a glacier, it might be the last thing you read.
(UNEP)

If you can't have bread... Despite a slight global dip in hunger, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 report makes one thing painfully clear: progress is too slow, too uneven, and too fragile. In 2024, up to 720 million people experienced chronic hunger, and nearly 2.6 billion couldn’t afford a healthy diet. Conflict, climate shocks, inflation, and economic instability continue to push food out of reach, especially in Africa, home to nearly 60% of projected global hunger by 2030.

Food price inflation remains a central villain, with a 10% rise linked to a 3.5% jump in food insecurity. Ultra-processed junk is now cheaper than fresh food in most places, leaving nutritious diets a luxury few can afford. The Gaza Strip, as we've noted above, is already facing famine, and funding cuts are forcing the WFP to scale back aid in multiple crisis zones. The report does offer a sliver of hope: some global responses have been better coordinated than in past crises. But without bold investment in small-scale producers, market transparency, and nutrition-focused social safety nets, the world will fall far short of its Zero Hunger goal, and millions more will go to bed hungry. Even when not on IF.
(WFP)

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Bottom line

And, exhale. A massive meta-analysis of studies involving nearly 30 million people has confirmed what many suspected: long-term exposure to air pollution significantly increases the risk of dementia. The review, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, found strong links between dementia and three major pollutants - PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide, and soot - all largely from fossil fuel combustion and urban emissions. For every 10 μg/m³ increase in PM2.5, dementia risk rose by 17%. While the data skew heavily toward high-income countries, researchers warn that marginalised communities, who often suffer the highest exposure, remain underrepresented in the literature because, of course, they are.
(The Lancet Planetary Health)

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Long reads

In Africa, for Africa. Diseases like malaria and TB still kill millions, but because they disproportionately affect low-income countries, they’re routinely overlooked by the global pharmaceutical industry. Gavi's VaccinesWork profiles the Drug Innovation Group (DIG) at the University of Ghana who is working to change that by training young scientists to develop new treatments.
(Gavi)

Remember where you came from... but don’t dwell there. Unless that there is where ancient viruses are that can help you kill bacteria today that are otherwise developing resistance to antibiotics.
(Gavi)

Sike. In the US alone, psychedelic medicine is poised to soon become a $10 billion market. How legit is it though? Grab a mushroom - to sit on - and read.
(Business Insider)

Give me my jab. Despite the best efforts of certain health secretaries and certain recently-deposed regulatory heads, confidence in vaccines has actually gone up since the pandemic began. Gavi breaks down this global study published in Nature.
(Gavi)

A bang and a whimper. If you're a certain kind of tech bro, you've probably got a bunker in New Zealand equipped with enough supplies to tide you over the coming nuclear apocalypse. Except, even you may not be prepared for how apocalyptic it could get.
(Gizmodo)

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Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn't want you to see this.