Disease hotspots flourish when the city meets the country

City-nature conflict “Rural-to-urban migrants tend to land on the edges of cities, where there isn’t necessarily as much infrastructure and governance regimes to make those areas less at risk to infectious disease outbreaks,” says lead author Creighton Connolly, a senior lecturer in development studies and the global South at the University of Lincoln. During West Africa’s Ebola outbreak in 2014, the World Health Organization notes, the disease spilled over into cities after almost 40 years of outbreaks in central Africa that were largely confined to remote rural areas. [...]he says, density needs to increase through higher buildings in certain areas with one- or two-storey shacks, as cities will be unmanageable if they continue peripheral expansion.

Interconnected disasters ‘the tip of the iceberg’

Speed read UN report shows clear links between global disasters Lack of risk management and climate change among common causes Tackling root causes across disciplines is essential, report says Extreme events are increasingly compounding each other, even if they initially seem wide apart and unconnected, making it more crucial to tackle their root causes, says a report. In turn, deforestation is linked to Western demand for meat, and has a knock-on effect on climate change, exacerbating extreme events elsewhere in the world, says the report. Need to strengthen Strengthening networks for sharing prevention and response experiences between countries, and mechanisms for international cooperation and allocation of funds, is critical says Tran Si Pha, head of the disaster management department at the Vietnam Red Cross Society.

Infectious disease research ‘alarmingly low’

In the 20 drugs companies scrutinised by the Access to Medicine Foundation, there were empty R&D pipelines for ten out of 16 emerging diseases identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a threat to public health. “Unless we take access planning and prioritisation seriously… then we’re not pandemic-prepared as a society or industry,” Jayasree Iyer, executive director, Access to Medicine Foundation The level of drug development is “alarmingly low” for these diseases, says the report, despite the WHO identifying them as priority diseases for R&D and the COVID-19 crisis highlighting the importance of readying strategies for potential outbreaks. Strengthening collaboration Thomas Cueni, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), and chairman of antimicrobial resistance body the AMR Industry Alliance, said he was confident that much was being done to strengthen access to medicines, including international collaborations.

Antibiotics ‘valley of death’ bridged by local link-ups

Speed read Companies developing antibiotics face high risk of bankruptcy - report New antibiotics are desperately needed amid rising drug resistance Partnerships in developing countries could help biotechs survive Smaller companies at the heart of innovation on new antibiotics can boost their chances of getting promising drugs to market by forging close links with partners in developing countries. Access to Medicine Foundation Antimicrobial resistance occurs when organisms such as bacteria and parasites adapt and stop responding to medicines, which makes infections more difficult to treat. The report notes that 5.7 million people die yearly from lack of access to the right antibiotics, mainly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and 700,000 from drug-resistant infections.

Planning for the next pandemic: facts and figures

The world is not prepared,” said the report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a body co-convened by the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO). According to the World Wide Fund For Nature, three or four new zoonotic diseases are emerging each year, and the problem is likely to worsen because of the need to feed a growing population and demand for wild meat as both a necessity and delicacy. According to the GPMB, the 20 per cent fall in Sierra Leone was enough to wipe out five years of development. [...]pressure looks set to grow to contain crop diseases, amid the world’s growing population and a rise in the number of people facing food insecurity from 23 per cent in 2014 to 26 per cent in 2018, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.