Hello, and welcome back to The Kable once again.
And once again, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) shows no signs of stopping. So far at least, neither Nigeria nor Kenya appears to be experiencing an outbreak. The week did begin with Nigeria reporting two suspected cases, but subsequent testing thankfully came back negative. And in Kenya, five patients were discharged, while no new cases were reported. Two patients are still undergoing treatment.
In the DRC, cases inched up to 10,741. And yes, the outbreak definitely seems to have slowed down. But the death toll passed another grim milestone, reaching 5,230. And one more medic, a British doctor this time, contracted Ebola and has since been evacuated to the UK. Amid this still-growing outbreak, and in the backdrop of seemingly never-ending conflict over resources, the IPC global food security monitor released its latest alert, and it says nearly 29 million people are already hungry, and that number will go up substantially in the next few months.
In encouraging news, the WHO this week greenlit two new Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine candidates to be included in the ongoing trial, one developed by the University of Oxford with Indiaâs Serum Institute, and the other being developed by Moderna. In the last bit of Ebola-related updates for this week, two travellers from Congo to Colombia were also suspected to have contracted Ebola, but later tests revealed they âonlyâ have malaria.
Not moving on from DRC just yet though because an outbreak of anthrax is killing hippos - at least 28 dead in the past month - in Virunga National Park, Africaâs oldest national park.
In what could yet turn out to be a boost to local manufacturing in Africa, South Africaâs Aspen Pharma is selling European commercialisation rights and related IP for Ovestin, its drug for managing menopausal symptoms, to the Dubai-HQed Ennogen.
In what should have come as no surprise to anybody, the US has cut South Africa and Rwanda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), its free trade pact with Africa.
It wasnât a good week for the Sahrawi people either, with the UN announcing the withdrawal of its MINURSO peacekeeping mission. No referendum, no peace either.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are on the rise everywhere, including Africa. And the Africa CDC now has a plan to beat them back, along with mental health conditions and injuries.
Last week was the first-ever African Medicines Agency Week. At the event held in Kigali, the agency launched two new regulatory hubs - the Capacity Strengthening Hub and the Regulatory Innovation and Manufacturing Readiness Hub. Names that leave nothing to the imagination. But just in case, the hubs will serve as hubs for capacity strengthening and for regulatory innovation and manufacturing readiness.
The WHO released a report which said progress against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) has been uneven, fragile even, and to achieve the goal of eliminating NTDs by 2030, we need increased domestic funding. The report wasnât called Duh.
For MĂŠdecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the week wasnât all so bad. In spite of being caught in so many instances over decades where MSF workers have been exploiting, in all ways, the people theyâre supposed to help, the only repercussion for MSF so far from their latest such instance - the abuse and exploitation of Sudanese children and women - has been that Swiss federal authorities have suspended some funding. Heck, MSF hasnât even named the staff who were found guilty of these actions, leaving them free to do the same thing again, and again, and again.
In Bangladesh, dengue continues to wreak havoc, with authorities not expecting any let-up before December.
Over in Europe, the Shamonda virus, which infected a human in France last week, has now swum across the Channel to two dairy farms in the UK. And Switzerland has recorded its first ever locally acquired case of Chikungunya. Make that four cases.
In the US, they keep reviving old ways to die and finding new one. In New York, a child became the first person to die in over 30 years to measles. And in Washington state, a man became the first person in the US to die of bird flu.
Gileadâs lenacapavir was/is supposed to be the golden ticket to help us get rid of the scourge that is HIV. Except Gilead hasnât been too forthcoming with supply. Hopefully, with Dr Reddyâs now securing the first-ever approval of a generic from the US FDA, that will change. The week got even better for the Indian drugmaker when Brazilian regulators approved its generic semaglutide.
Over in Europe, grocery stores and supermarkets were hit with a cyberattack that disabled their refrigeration systems. Twice. Veggies perished, meat and dairy had to be discarded and, maybe, people watched their dreams melt away. But what made this cyberattack really, really bad was the sequel where they hit blood banks in France, changing the temperature of equipment storing frozen plasma from â30°C to 110°C. Enough to make anybodyâs blood boil.
And finally, if you thought October was a hot, hot month, you were right. In fact, it was the hottest October of all time.
Stories Of The Week
Three Act Tragedy. Developing countries received $28â32 billion in public adaptation finance from developed countries in 2024, the latest year for which data is available. As global warming heads for an overshoot of 1.5°C, UNEPâs Adaptation Gap Report 2026 estimates that even tripling international flows by 2035 would cover only 20â29% of developing countriesâ annual adaptation needs after accounting for inflation. For least developed countries and small island developing states, adaptation needs already amount to an estimated 3â4% of GDP, roughly twice the share for upper-middle-income developing countries.
In West Africa, UNEP puts Senegalâs tagged adaptation budget at less than 5% of its estimated annual needs. In South Asia, Bangladesh committed at least $400 million of domestic revenue to its climate trust fund between 2010 and 2017â18, while its latest national climate plan puts adaptation needs at $12â14 billion a year. In South America, the report cites research estimating about 230 premature deaths annually from wildfire smoke in Indigenous territories across the Amazon Basin. The review of climate losses such as ill health and lost livelihoods draws most heavily on cases from Africa, South Asia and Oceania. It also finds that heat deaths are systematically underreported in lower-income countries, while recorded financial losses, especially insured losses, are concentrated in richer ones.
Next week, once again world leaders will meet, this time in TĂźrkiye, to decide how the environment can be saved at COP31. Two weeks of talk and no action is what we expect. But itâll be fun to watch governments disagree to disagree on tripling finance for the climate, especially with the two different baseline models in the UNEP report, which already pegs the difference between them at $35 billion a year by 2035. It will be even more fun to watch who pledges how much. As for how much of those pledges materialise into actual contributions, see, there are no limits to your dreams.
(UNEP)
And Then There Were Six. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) stand to gain the most from scaling up six climate and health measures, according to a new WHO analysis. The agency estimates that (1) wider use of heat-health warning systems, (2) climate-resilient drinking water, (3) basic sanitation, (4) handwashing facilities, (5) cleaner household energy and (6) fossil fuel pricing reform could avert 1.6 million deaths worldwide each year and generate $3.9 trillion a year in economic welfare benefits, including the estimated value of better health and lower emissions.
Most of the projected gains hinge on how governments price fossil fuels, obviously. WHO estimates that removing inefficient subsidies and taxing fuels to reflect harms such as air pollution could avert 1.2 million deaths a year and yield US$5.4 trillion in annual fiscal gains. For the other five measures, WHO estimates $24 in benefits for every dollar invested. Since fossil fuel pricing is where the bulk of this economic and health windfall is coming from, safe to say itâs not coming.
(WHO)
Murder Is Easy. The share of journalist killings that remain judicially unresolved worldwide rose from 85% to 86%, the first increase since UNESCO began tracking impunity in 2012. A 2025 UN assessment put the Middle East and North Africa highest for impunity, followed by Asia and the Pacific and Africa. In its latest report, UNESCO recorded 189 journalists and media workers killed in 2024â25, including 97 in its Arab States region, 37 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 34 in Asia and the Pacific.
Across the two years, Palestine (no surprise) recorded the most killings, with at least 62, followed by Mexico (17), Sudan (14), Ukraine (12), Pakistan (11), Yemen (10), Bangladesh (7) and Colombia (6). India and Peru tied for ninth, with four each.
On the environment beat, surprisingly, only three journalists were killed in connection with reporting on the defence of land, natural resources and the environment in 2024â25, down from six in 2022â23 and eight in 2020â21.
The report also has this line: âIn 2024-2025, 15 journalists were reportedly killed while wearing identifiable press vests or in vehicles clearly marked as press. All of these killings occurred in conflict zones.â No prizes for guessing where most, if not all, of these journalists were, and who did the killing.
(UNESCO)
Bottom line
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. Researchers tracked ground movement from 2014 to 2023 and found the most severe sinking in parts of Southeast Asia, West and Central Asia, and North America. Mexico City and Jakarta are among the hotspots in a satellite survey of 465 urban areas with more than a million people. They also detected it in African and South American cities, where it has been less studied. Nearly half the urban areas in the survey had never been assessed using satellite radar.
The damage is especially costly when one neighbourhood sinks faster than the next. Uneven movement can crack buildings and sewer lines, while sinking ground can worsen flooding. Groundwater pumping is often a major driver, which gives city authorities something they can act on. Beijing and nearby Tianjin shifted towards surface water, and sinking has halted in parts of the region. Watch whether other cities use the new maps to target pumping restrictions and identify sewers, roads and flood defences that need attention first.
(Nature Cities)
Taken At The Flood. A US modelling study estimates that drinking 14 standard drinks a week, or two a day on average, carries roughly a one-in-25 lifetime risk of dying from a cause attributable to alcohol. Researchers combined evidence on alcohol-related disease and injury with US health data. Even at seven drinks a week, any potential benefits for certain cardiovascular outcomes were outweighed by the combined risks, which include several cancers, liver disease and injuries.
The estimate only reflects US patterns of disease and mortality, and a standard drink contains different amounts of alcohol under different national definitions. For public health agencies elsewhere, the study offers a way to make guidance clearer. Giving people the amount of alcohol in grams and explaining how absolute risk changes as intake rises would be more informative than asking them to interpret the word moderate. In any case, the informed Kable advice is, when it comes to alcohol, just say no!
(Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs)
Elephants Can Remember. A study in Science Advances identified 107,356 wild species in use or trade, more than twice the roughly 50,000 in a previous global estimate. The researchers brought together broader datasets and newer studies, including work tracking species sold online. The new count also takes in fisheries, timber and fashion as well as exotic pets and ornaments. It shows how much previous assessments missed, particularly among invertebrates. Meanwhile, there is a certain Indian âglobal wildlife rescue and conservation centreâ that keeps buying all kinds of wildlife from all around the world through means fair and otherwise.
(Science Advances)
Towards Zero. About 240 million adolescents aged 11â17 reported no day in the previous week with at least an hour of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, according to new WHO estimates. The survey measured how many days reached the hour mark, so adolescents could have accumulated more than an hour across the week without reaching it on any single day. The share with no qualifying days was 28% for girls and 22% for boys. Only 14% of adolescents reached the mark on all seven days. The assessment draws on 389 surveys across 140 countries and territories. The share reporting no qualifying days ranged from about 4% to more than 40% across countries, while global activity levels have barely shifted since 2010.
(WHO)
Long reads
Cards On The Table. As global health aid shrinks, German and British officials at the World Health Summit in Berlin raised the prospect of ânatural selectionâ among non-profit partnerships that develop drugs for neglected diseases. These groups already compete for grants but the wyt suggestion was that funders could let some partnerships shrink or fold as money gets tighter. Twelve of these partnerships reported more than 100 products in Phase 2 trials or later in 2023. If a partnership folds, who will carry its trials through, especially for diseases that offer Big Pharma precious little bottomline boosts?
(Health Policy Watch)
Cat Among The Pigeons. Not a read per se, but The Kable is your favourite way to end the week with, so we felt duty-bound to bring you something to gently lull you into the weekend. A collection of some of the best pics of pooches from around the world this year.
(Dog Photography Awards)