Covid-19 pandemic has derailed progress on sustainable development goals, says WHO

The World Health Statistics report detailed an overall shortage of services, in and outside the health system, to prevent and treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The report also highlighted the need for stronger data and health information systems, owing to "uneven capacities to collect and use accurate, timely, and comparable health statistics.” Samira Asma, WHO assistant director general, said, "As the world battles the most serious pandemic in 100 years, just a decade away from the SDG [sustainable development goal] deadline, we must act together to strengthen primary healthcare and focus on the most vulnerable among us in order to eliminate the gross inequalities that dictate who lives a long, healthy life and who doesn't.”

Vaccine Administration: The Growing Role of Prefilled Syringes

(Note: The MIDAS database reflects vaccine doses that are dispensed with a prescription in retail or hospital settings, so the COVID-19 vaccines and other public-health-administered vaccines are not fully reflected in that data set.) Stamoran adds, "However, across the rest of the world, vial-based vaccines still make up the majority of the volume dispensed." [...]there is plenty of room for growth for this newer administration device. [...]PFS are now widely used for annual flu shots, heparin injections, and a growing list of injectable therapies across multiple disease states. According to a 2021 article authored byGuillaume Lehee, R&D Innovation Leader for BD Medical-Pharmaceutical Systems, the use of PFS to vaccinate 300 million individuals in the United States in the event of a future pandemic could save more than three million hours of healthcare practitioners' time (1). [...]today's PFS are not yet proven to be compatible with ultrafrozen temperatures as the existing glass materials and other components may not stand up to the extremely low required temperatures," explains Stamoran.

Machine Learning Approaches for Temporal and Spatio-Temporal Covid-19 Forecasting: A Brief Review and a Contribution

In December 2019 an outbreak of a new disease happened, in Wuhan city, China, in which the symptoms were very similar to pneumonia. The disease was attributed to SARS-CoV-2 as the infectious agent and it was called the new coronavirus or Covid-19. In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic of the new coronavirus. We have already counted more than 110 million cases and almost 2.5 million deaths worldwide. In order to assist in decision-making to contain the disease, several scientists around the world have engaged in various efforts, and they have proposed a lot of systems and solutions for tracking, monitoring, and predicting confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19. Mathematical models help to analyze and understand the evolution of the disease, but understanding the disease was not enough, it was necessary to understand the problem in a quantitative way to lead the decision-making during the pandemic. Several initiatives have made use of Artificial Intelligence, and models were designed using machine learning algorithms with features for temporal and spatio-temporal investigation and prediction of cases of Covid-19. Among the algorithms used are Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Ecological Niche Models (ENMs), Long-Short Term Memory Networks (LSTM), linear regression, and others. And these had good results, and to analyze them, the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Log Root Mean Squared Error (RMSLE), correlation coefficient, and others were used as metrics. Covid-19 presents a huge problem to public health worldwide, so it is of utmost importance to investigate it, and with these two approaches it is possible to track not only how the disease evolves but also to know which areas are at risk. And these solutions can help in supporting decision-making by health managers to make the best decisions for the disease that is in the outbreak. This chapter aims to present a literature review and a brief contribution to the use of machine learning methods for temporal and spatio-temporal prediction of Covid-19, using Brazil and its federative units as a case study. From canonical methods to deep networks and hybrid committee-based, approaches will be investigated. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Rabies in a postpandemic world: resilient reservoirs, redoubtable riposte, recurrent roadblocks, and resolute recidivism.

Rabies is an ancient disease. Two centuries since Pasteur, fundamental progress occurred in virology, vaccinology, and diagnostics-and an understanding of pathobiology and epizootiology of rabies in testament to One Health-before common terminological coinage. Prevention, control, selective elimination, and even the unthinkable-occasional treatment-of this zoonosis dawned by the twenty-first century. However, in contrast to smallpox and rinderpest, eradication is a wishful misnomer applied to rabies, particularly post-COVID-19 pandemic. Reasons are minion. Polyhostality encompasses bats and mesocarnivores, but other mammals represent a diverse spectrum of potential hosts. While rabies virus is the classical member of the genus, other species of lyssaviruses also cause the disease. Some reservoirs remain cryptic. Although global, this viral encephalitis is untreatable and often ignored. As with other neglected diseases, laboratory-based surveillance falls short of the notifiable ideal, especially in lower- and middle-income countries. Calculation of actual burden defaults to a flux within broad health economic models. Competing priorities, lack of defined, long-term international donors, and shrinking local champions challenge human prophylaxis and mass dog vaccination toward targets of 2030 for even canine rabies impacts. For prevention, all licensed vaccines are delivered to the individual, whether parenteral or oral-essentially 'one and done'. Exploiting mammalian social behaviors, future 'spreadable vaccines' might increase the proportion of immunized hosts per unit effort. However, the release of replication-competent, genetically modified organisms selectively engineered to spread intentionally throughout a population raises significant biological, ethical, and regulatory issues in need of broader, transdisciplinary discourse. How this rather curious idea will evolve toward actual unconventional prevention, control, or elimination in the near term remains debatable. In the interim, more precise terminology and realistic expectations serve as the norm for diverse, collective constituents to maintain progress in the field.

Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture by Lorenzo Servitje (review)

Set in the twenty-first century, The Last Man was an apocalyptic story of a pandemic spreading around the world, causing the near elimination of the human population, almost literally to the last person standing. The links between public health and military medicine at this time are well-known and exemplified by Edmund Parkes's Manual of Practical Hygiene (1864). The claim that such literature had a "broader reach” in spreading the martial metaphor in medicine is questionable, without more evidence of impact.

Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present by Frank M. Snowden (review)

Thematically, the book concentrates on the intellectual, cultural, and public health contexts of epidemics, with frequent attention to the interplay of war and disease. The main disappointment (for me) in his choices of what to include and what to leave out is the extremely thin treatment of the disease experience of the Americas in the wake of Columbus. For readers interested primarily in Europe's cultural, scientific, and public health engagement with epidemics, this book will serve admirably.

Recognising the potential of neglected tropical disease programmes as a platform for pandemic preparedness: the Ascend experience.

Living in an increasingly interconnected world, epidemics and pandemics are increasingly likely to be a vista for the future. This, coupled with the likely devastating effects of climate change, means that humanitarian crises are likely to increase. Now, more than ever before, is the time to scale up investment in prevention and preparedness strategies, and to review our current approaches to delivering health services, including those that address neglected tropical diseases. The Ascend West and Central Africa programme has illustrated the importance of innovation, multisector partnerships, resilience and the opportunity for change.

Forging Ahead the Repositioning of Multitargeted Drug Ivermectin.

With the advent of ivermectin, tremendous improvement in public health has been observed, especially in the treatment of onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis that created chaos mostly in rural, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin American countries. The discovery of ivermectin became a boon to millions of people that had suffered in the pandemic and still hold its pharmacological potential against these. Ivermectin continued to surprise scientists because of its notable role in the treatment of various other tropical diseases (Chagas, leishmaniasis, worm infections, etc.) and is viewed as the safest drug with the least toxic effects. The current review highlights its role in unexplored avenues towards forging ahead of the repositioning of this multitargeted drug in cancer, viral (the evaluation of the efficacy of ivermectin against SARS-Cov-2 is under investigation) and bacterial infection and malaria. This article also provides a glimpse of regulatory considerations of drug repurposing and current formulation strategies. Due to its broad-spectrum activity, multitargeted nature and promising efforts are put towards the repurposing of this drug throughout the field of medicine. This single drug originated from a microbe, changed the face of global health by proving its unmatched success and progressive efforts continue in maintaining its bequestnin the management of global health by decreasing the burden of various diseases worldwide.

Preventive Measures against Ebola and COVID-19 and Their Impact on Human Dirty-Hand Disease Mitigation in Côte d'Ivoire

Hygiene is the most useful public health measure for preventing infections of important endemic and emerging diseases of global significance. This study aimed to assess the impact of these public health preventive measures on dirty hand diseases. A retrospective survey was conducted in the rural general hospitals of Taabo (south-central Côte d'Ivoire) and Marcory (urban Abidjan) to collect clinical data on dirty hand diseases in the patients' records from 2013 to 2020. In addition, focus group discussions (N = 8) were conducted in the communities in both settings to identify the sociocultural and economic hindering or fostering factors that affected the adoption of and the compliance with handwashing and disinfection practices. A total of 3245 and 8154 patients' records were examined in the general hospitals of Taabo and Marcory, respectively. Compared with women, men were more affected by typhoid fever (OR, 0.68 [95%CI, 0.53–0.88]) and influenza (OR, 0.87 [95%CI, 0.75–1]). Hygiene measures promoted during Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks had no impact on the prevalence of typhoid fever in both settings;however, a positive impact was observed regarding influenza infections. Populations were aware of the importance of handwashing for public health but had difficulties adhering due to financial constraints, access to drinking water, and the absence or scarcity of handwashing facilities.

Editors' Introduction: The Politics of Infectious Disease

To take but a few cases, it is impossible to grasp the rationales used during the Atlantic Slave Trade without tracing the corresponding voyages and reproductive habits of the female Aedes aegypti, the mosquito responsible for transmitting yellow fever and for which Africans were conveniently considered immune (Watts, 1999: 228–9);nor is it possible to understand the role of colonial medicine in the ‘Scramble for Africa' without decrypting later boasts such as that from the French Governor of Morocco who intended to ‘cure the diseases that for so long have corrupted this people' (Rieff, 2002: 63). While the murder of polio vaccinators in Pakistan is cloaked in anti-Western conspiracy theories, there is also a broader scepticism that questions the priorities of international donors, not to mention a clear political failure on the part of the State, that should not be glossed over (Khan and Constable, 2019). Much like the previous article, she points to ‘political, social and economic grievances' that crystallised around a response where the population suffered from ‘long-standing health needs, the cancellation of the elections, and coercive practices of the armed forces and police'. [...]this is hardly helped by MSF's own contradictions in adopting the World Health Organization's approach of ‘go big and go fast' and attempting to maintain relevance to an increasingly controversial response strategy, all the while struggling to preserve a degree of independent action that held no interest to local power brokers.

Epidemics of Neglect

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed multiple fault lines in the performances of health services at every level – from community to national to global – in ensuring universal, equitable access to preventive and curative care. Tragically, this has been to the detriment of those who have suffered and died not only from COVID-19, but also from the myriad other ailments affecting people around the world. Of those, we wish to highlight here some key categories of diseases that have caused a greater burden of illness and deaths as a consequence of the policies and political decisions made in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. In our view, these should be considered epidemics or, more accurately, syndemics – the clustering and interactions of two or more diseases or health conditions and socio-environmental factors – of neglect.

The Role of Active Immunity and its Types

When a pathogen activates B cells and T cells, memory B cells and memory T cells form, and the major immune response happens as a result. These memory cells "remember" every unique pathogen an animal encounters over the course of its lifetime and can develop a potent secondary response if the pathogen is discovered again. Due to the immune system's proactive self-preparation, this sort of immunity is both active and adaptable. The innate immune system and both the cell-mediated and humoral components of immunity are frequently involved in active immunity. Here, Maiorino discusses the naturally and artificially acquired active immunity.

Vaccine network design to maximize immunization coverage

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to consider how to reach vulnerable communities with extended outreach services to improve vaccination uptake. The authors created an optimization model to align with decision-makers' objective to maximize immunization coverage within constrained budgets and deploy resources considering empirical data and endogenous demand.Design/methodology/approachA mixed integer program (MIP) determines the location of outreach sites and the resource deployment across health centers and outreach sites. The authors validated the model and evaluated the approach in consultation with UNICEF using a case study from The Gambia.FindingsResults in The Gambia showed that by opening new outreach sites and optimizing resource allocation and scheduling, the Ministry of Health could increase immunization coverage from 91.0 to 97.1% under the same budget. Case study solutions informed managerial insights to drive gains in vaccine coverage even without the application of sophisticated tools.Originality/valueThe research extended resource constrained LMIC vaccine distribution modeling literature in two ways: first, endogenous calculation of demand as a function of distance to health facility location enabled the effective design of the vaccine network around convenience to the community and second, the model's resource bundle concept more accurately and flexibly represented complex requirements and costs for specific resources, which facilitated buy-in from stakeholders responsible for managing health budgets. The paper also demonstrated how to leverage empirical research and spatial analysis of publicly available demographic and geographic data to effectively represent important contextual factors.

MEDICINAL PLANTS AND VACCINATIONS USED AGAINST COVID-19: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

The newly emerged severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has deteriorated the global order economically, socially and politically. As an emergency of global concern, the disease continuously spread havoc with its dreadful health manifestations with no regard for any race, religion and region. The mortality rates in different countries are surprisingly variable and there is debate about population-wise differential response to virus. Different countries have imposed lock-down to reduce the spread of virus;however, the positive outcomes of lock-down in terms of reducing mortality rate and transmission of virus are still questioned. Further, public accusations and debate of world powers regarding the origin of virus has created regional hate sentiments and political chaos which could result is serious repercussions following miscalculation of actual facts. Scientific communities are struggling to cope with the disease by developing potential vaccines against the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 and were testing the already marketed drugs against this coronavirus. Therefore, several medicinal plants and various vaccinations have been used against Covid-19. This review highlights the origin, virulence, vaccination but most importantly the plants extracts used against the causative agent of COVID-19.

Access to basic water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities and associated factors in Ethiopia: evidence from demographics and health surveys

In low- and middle-income countries, ensuring water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities for households remains a major public health concern. Therefore, this study aimed to assess households' access to WASH services and associated factors in Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 16,650 and 8,663 households in the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) and 2019 Mini-EDHS, respectively. The households were selected using a stratified two-stage cluster sampling technique. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with basic WASH services. Households' access to basic water services was 65.2% (95% CI: 64.5–65.9%) and 68.7% (95% CI: 68.01–69.4%) in the 2016 EDHS and 2019 Mini-EDHS, respectively. Only 25.9% (95% CI: 25.2–26.62%) in the 2016 EDHS and 27.5% (95% CI: 26.34–28.3%) in the 2019 Mini-EDHS households had access to basic sanitation services. Moreover, only 38% (95% CI: 37.25–38.8%) of households had access to basic hygiene services in the 2016 EDHS. Female-headed households, urban residents, having education, family members ≥7, presence of soaps or detergents, and having a better wealth index were the most likely to have access to basic WASH services. The findings in general suggest the need for effective WASH interventions.

Role of neglected parasitic diseases in the era of COVID-19 pandemics

There are some doubts about the exact relationship between neglected infectious diseases (NIDs) and COVID-19 disease, which remains to be clearly defined. The present review summarized the effect of parasitic infections as the risk factors or protective agents in the COVID-19 pandemic. Parasites could proficiently modulate immune responses. Thus, parasitic infections could have a different impact on the incidence and clinical severity of COVID-19 in different regions of the world. Also, restoring programs to prevent, treat, and control NIDs, in particular helminths, could help in reducing the incidence and mortality of COVID-19 in endemic areas and help to increase vaccination effectiveness. Changes in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection may have systemic immunomodulatory effects toward suppressing host immune responses, reducing vaccine efficacy and increasing the severity of other infectious diseases. The cytokine storm observed in severe cases of COVID-19 is characterized by a predominance of proinflammatory cytokines, such as IL-6. However, it is possible that helminth infection could change the outcome of infection by modifying the Th2 response to limit the inflammatory component;this would be particularly apparent in areas endemic for helminthic infections, which suggests a possible protective effect against COVID-19. Because parasitic infections affect more than 2 billion people throughout the world, their impact on COVID-19- associated effects on public health could be considerable. Further studies with larger sample sizes would be needed to explore the possible role of neglected parasitic infections in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elimination of human onchocerciasis: progress report, 2021

This progress report provides an update on the progress made towards eliminating nnchocerciasis (river blindness) by the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of its road map on neglected tropical diseases for 2021-2030. The report highlights that the goal is to eliminate the need for mass drug administration of ivermectin in at least one focus in 34 countries by 2030, in more than 50% of the population in at least 16 countries and in the entire endemic population in at least 12 countries. However, challenges remain in achieving these goals, including incomplete mapping of all transmission zones, co-endemicity of onchocerciasis and loiasis, a potential decrease in sensitivity to ivermectin, uncoordinated cross-border work, suboptimal programme implementation and inadequate technical and financial resources. COVID-19 has also delayed national programmes, with millions of doses of preventive chemotherapy that should have been distributed expiring. The report also provides regional highlights, including that in 2021, 23 countries reported having treated a total of 142.3 million people for onchocerciasis, representing 58.1% of global coverage, and that the African region faces the greatest challenge with 99% of the global burden of the disease in this region.