COVID-19, Update 13 January 2021
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health recognises that climate change
is an existential threat to the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
In October 2020, we joined national health and academic alliances to declare
climate change an emergency requiring accelerated col...laborative actions. This
position statement summarises our recommendations and activity about
mitigation and adaptation against the impact of climate change on children and
young people around the world.
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Bulletin of the World Health Organization; Type: Perspectives
Article ID: BLT.19.24843
Planetary Health needs frequent monitoring of global environmental changes and global land cover and land use - Power Point presentation
You can find the full text on the website (Source link)
The 2021 WHO health and climate change global survey report provides a valuable snapshot of the overall progress governments have made in addressing the health risks of climate change. The findings on key health and climate change indicators aim to empower policy makers to: make informed decisions o...n the implementation of policies and plans; identify evidence gaps; and better understand the barriers to achieving adaptation and resilience priorities in the health sector while maximizing the health benefits of sector-wide climate mitigation efforts.
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Lancet Planet Health 2020; 4: e271–79
PNAS | March 4, 2014 | vol. 111 | no. 9
Malaria is an important disease that has a global distribution and significant health burden. The spatial limits of its distribution and seasonal activity are sensitive to climate factors, as well as the local capacity to control the disease. Malaria is also ...one of the few health outcomes that has been modeled by more than one research group and can therefore facilitate the first model intercomparison for health impacts under a future with climate change. We used bias-corrected temperature and rainfall simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate models to compare the metrics of five statistical and dynamical malaria impact models for three future time periods (2030s, 2050s, and 2080s). We evaluated three malaria outcome metrics at global and regional levels: climate suitability, additional population at risk and additional person-months at risk across the model outputs. The malaria projections were based on five different global climate models, each run under four emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways, RCPs) and a single population projection. We also investigated the modeling uncertainty associated with future projections of populations at risk for malaria owing to climate change. Our findings show an overall global net increase in climate suitability and a net increase in the population at risk, but with large uncertainties. The model outputs indicate a net increase in the annual person-months at risk when comparing from RCP2.6 to RCP8.5 from the 2050s to the 2080s. The malaria outcome metrics were highly sensitive to the choice of malaria impact model, especially over the epidemic fringes of the malaria distribution.
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Both Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s largest food exporters. How could global food be impacted?
Science of The Total Environment Volume 764, 10 April 2021, 142919
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 6, ISSUE 5, e388-e390, May 01, 2022. As the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment turns 50, the role of the health stakeholder community in forward-looking environmental agendas is more important than ever. Breathing air, drinking water, and eating food i...s a daily requirement for healthy human bodies. These basic needs inextricably link human health to the health of our environment. Hence, core elements of the global environmental movement were built on concern for the negative impact of pollution on human and ecosystem health.
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This fourth annual report monitors global progress towards the 2023 target for global elimination of industrially produced trans-fatty acids (TFA), highlighting achievements during the past year (October 2021 – September 2022). Countries are responding to the World Health Organization (WHO) call t...o action by putting into place best-practice TFA policies. Mandatory TFA policies are currently in effect for 3.4 billion people in 60 countries (43% of the world population); of these, 43 countries have best-practice policies in effect, covering 2.8 billion people (36% of the world population).
Over the past year, several additional countries took action to eliminate industrially produced TFA: best-practice policies came into effect in India in January 2022, Uruguay in May 2022 and Oman in July 2022. Best-practice policies were passed in Bangladesh in November 2021 (to come into effect in December 2022) and in Ukraine in September 2020 (to come into effect in October 2023), best-practice TFA policies are projected to pass soon in Mexico, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.
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American trypanosomiasis, commonly called
Chagas disease (CD), was prevalent once in rural areas
of Latin America where poverty is widespread and was
considered a silent and poorly visible disease. It
has become a global neglected tropical disease and a
significant public health th...reat worldwide due to
globalization over last century. More recently, it has
attracted much more attention, and “April 14” has
been designated as “World Chagas Disease Day” by
the World Health Assembly of 2019 to raise
awareness of the disease as a neglected tropical disease,
to improve the rates of early treatment and recovery,
and to achieve the ambitious goal to interrupt its
transmission.
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Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the global economy was suffering from the repercussions of several man-made conflicts, climate shocks, COVID-19 and rising costs — with devastating consequences for poor people in low-income and developing countries. The war in Ukraine — a major “breadbasket...” for the world — is deepening these challenges on an unprecedented scale. In the immediate, swift and bold action is required by both wealthy and low-income nations to avert further humanitarian and economic catastrophe.
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As a conflict between two major agricultural powers, the Russia–Ukraine war has various negative socioeconomic impacts that are now being felt internationally and might worsen, notably, for global food security. If the war deepens, the food crisis will worsen, posing a challenge to many countries,... especially those that rely on food imports, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Simultaneously, the war came at a bad time for global food markets because food prices were already high due to disruptions in the supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, strong global demand, and poor harvests in some countries. Understanding how conflict-related disruptions in global food and fertilizer markets might affect price and availability is critical for understanding the overall impact on global food security. Further, four months into the war, its implications for food security suggest that this review is timely, urgent, and highly needed.
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Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease caused by a protozoan of the Leishmania genus, and is considered a neglected tropical disease. It still remains a main public health concern at global level and in Arab world mainly in low-income countries. Therefore, this study was designed to evaluate the Arab ...world’s growing contribution to global leishmaniasis research.
This study describes a bibliometric review of all leishmaniasis research publications published between January 1998 and December 2017 indexed on the Scopus database.
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This fourth WHO report on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) reviews the progress made towards achieving the Roadmap targets for 2020, noting the remaining challenges, then looks beyond 2020 to evaluate the changing global health and development landscape, considering the implications of integrating... these diseases into the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are targeted for global control or elimination. Recognising that the populations most in need of medicines to target NTDs are those least able to support and sustain them financially, the pharmaceutical industry created mechanisms for donating medicines and experti...se to affected countries through partnerships with the WHO, development agencies, non-governmental organisations and philanthropic donors. In the last 30 y, companies have established programmes to donate 17 different medicines to overcome the burden of NTDs. Billions of tablets, capsules, intravenous and oral solutions have been donated, along with the manufacturing, supply chains and research necessary to support these efforts. Industry engagement has stimulated other donors to support NTDs with funds and oversight so that the ‘heath benefit’ return on investment in these programmes is truly a ‘best value in public health’. Many current donations are ‘open-ended’, promising support as long as necessary to achieve defined health targets. Extraordinary global health advances have been made in filariasis, onchocerciasis, trachoma, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, intestinal parasites and others; and these advances are taking place in the context of strengthening health systems and meeting the global development goals espoused by the WHO. The pharmaceutical manufacturers, already strong collaborators in initiating or supporting these disease-targeted programmes, have committed to continuing their partnership roles in striving to meet the targets of the WHO’s new NTD roadmap to 2030.
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Diets are changing everywhere, and the burden of disease associated with unhealthy diets is a worldwide concern. Measurement and monitoring of diets across countries and population groups is critical. However, there are no harmonized metrics for tracking how the healthfulness of diets around the wor...ld is evolving.
This report assesses the validity, usefulness and fitness for purpose of existing healthy diet metrics as global and national monitoring indicators, presents a comparative assessment of selected healthy diet metrics and discusses priorities and opportunities to improve diet monitoring. This report is an important first step of the Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative to respond to the need for developing healthy diets metrics for assessing and monitoring diets at national and global level.
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This report makes clear that there is a path to end AIDS. Taking that path will help ensure preparedness to address other pandemic challenges, and advance progress across the Sustainable Development Goals. The data and real-world examples in the report make it very clear what that path is. It is not... a mystery. It is a choice. Some leaders are already following the path—and succeeding. It is inspiring to note that Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe have already achieved the 95–95–95 targets, and at least 16 other countries (including eight in sub-Saharan Africa) are close to doing so.
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Evidenced-based multidisciplinary collaborative strategies are required to improve global mental health and avert possible catastrophic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through the effects of economic recessions and social disruptions on already fragile populations with little or no social protectio...n. A concerted global partnership is needed to stabilise the struggling health-care systems of many low-income and middle-income countries
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