Government coordination and transparency help countries fight pandemics. These principles may seem intuitive, but the diversity of the world’s health systems, governments, and societies can make them complicated to apply. The SARS-affected countries again had a head start on addressing problems that have brought other countries up short.

Republics, federations, and unitary states differ in the degree to which their central governments command power, raise revenue, make decisions, and administer the affairs of state. Public health, in particular, is an area of responsibility that often overlaps federal, regional, and municipal authorities. Such organizational complexity can make managing public health systems and delivering their services during a pandemic particularly opaque. The countries that confronted SARS have had an opportunity to address such organizational shortcomings.

China is a case in point. In 2003, Beijing’s response to SARS was slow, secretive, and poorly coordinated, opening China to criticism both at home and abroad. This year, despite some uncertainty about the timeline before it reported the novel coronavirus to the World Health Organization (WHO), China has responded to the pandemic with far more effective internal communication and faster scientific and epidemiological exchange. The central, provincial, and municipal governments appear to be better coordinated this time around, with more transparent interactions with the international community than in 2003.

After the SARS outbreak, Asian citizens began to see health-care delivery as an essential public good.

Several factors likely account for this improvement. China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its provincial arms were established after SARS, and they facilitated better public health coordination during the current pandemic. The country has embraced greater data transparency now than it did during SARS, evidenced by the higher number of peer-reviewed articles on COVID-19 in major medical journals. New information tools, including social media, may have increased citizens’ expectations and encouraged their participation in scrutinizing their government’s decisions.

The WHO issued International Health Regulations in 2005 that required every country to build public health systems based on coordination and transparency. China responded by developing disease reporting laws, regulations, and strategic plans for disease control. The fields of health policy, health-care administration, and public policy appear to have grown. China now has a health system with clear roles assigned to such agencies as the Chinese CDC. Although the country’s health system is much larger and more complex than it was in 2003, it is also more coordinated and transparent.

China is not the only country in Asia that streamlined and clarified its systems after SARS. That common experience in 2003 inspired governments from Japan and South Korea to Singapore and Malaysia to improve their administrative capabilities and share more information with citizens during pandemics. Their own past experience—and the present experience of other countries—has made clear that cover-ups and disorganization only lead to public anger.

A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT

The SARS experience put public health higher on the agendas of Asian countries such as China, Thailand, and Vietnam, marking a shift in national priorities. In the late twentieth century, many Asian governments heavily prioritized economic growth, inspiring even sedate institutions like the World Bank to speak of an “East Asian miracle.” The period of sustained economic growth was necessary: it helped pay for public health infrastructure and formed part of the social contract in many Asian countries.

Until the twenty-first century, East Asian governments concentrated on providing the stability that made economic expansion possible. They largely considered good health among the population to be a consequence of progress, rather than a determinant or an end in itself. SARS sparked debates in many Asian countries about the role and purpose of government. Faced with a threat to their legitimacy, many of the region’s governments then taxed or borrowed their way to universal health care, strengthened their public health systems, and improved the conditions in which their citizens lived and worked. Vietnam is a stand-out example: the country increased its per capita spending on public health by an average of nine percent every year between 2000 and 2016.

The SARS experience put public health higher on the agendas of Asian countries.

SARS was not the only reason for this shift throughout the region. As incomes rose in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, populations grew more sophisticated and better educated. Consequently, they demanded more social and political rights, such as health care and government transparency, after receiving mostly economic rights up until then. In political science terms, modern Asian governments tend to draw their legitimacy more often from outputs, such as providing effective public services, than from inputs, such as elections. After the SARS outbreak, Asian citizens began to see health-care delivery as an essential public good, and so its provision became critical to maintaining government legitimacy.

A social contract has two sides, however, and even when the government holds up its end, success depends on societal cohesion. Here, too, the experience of SARS has given East Asian societies an advantage in confronting COVID-19. A relatively recent epidemic memory reinforced public awareness of the need for social solidarity and joint sacrifice in such an emergency. Past experience helped Hong Kongers, the Taiwanese, and the Vietnamese to understand and easily comply with physical distancing and facemask requirements. Stay-at-home quarantine orders in Singapore and movement control orders in Malaysia required citizen cooperation on a large scale; governments could ask for this while drawing on the experience of previous pandemics to persuade citizens of their rights and their duties during the current one.

PATIENT PROGRESS

The world now looks to Asia for lessons to apply to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it will find no overnight solutions. Asian governments spent the 17 “peacetime” years between SARS and COVID-19 addressing the very problems that now plague other countries. They built public health infrastructure and did the hard political work of clarifying the roles and power structures that would take hold during a crisis. They built effective communication channels and made themselves comfortable with greater transparency and accountability than they had previously allowed. They even rewrote social contracts to elevate health as a priority.

The lessons Asian governments drew from SARS may not yield an instant cure, but they are useful for other countries fighting the current pandemic and preparing for future ones. As countries grapple with their own national heart attacks of COVID-19, they, too, will learn lessons that lay foundations for improved pandemic responses in the future.

Title: How nuclear forces worldwide are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic
Author: Krzyzaniak, John
Publication(s): Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Date: 14 April 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/how-nuclear-forces-worldwide-are-dealing-with-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Title: COVID-19 and the Doomsday Clock: Observations on managing global risk
Author: Bulletin Science and Security Board
Publication(s): Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Date: 15 April 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/covid-19-and-the-doomsday-clock-observations-on-managing-global-risk/

Title: Another victim of the pandemic: trust in the government
Author: Macfarlane, Allison
Publication(s): Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Date: 13 April 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/another-victim-of-the-pandemic-trust-in-the-government/

We are implementing COVID-19 initiative in our community and we are interested in an opportunity to share it with you. So, our initiative is called «Tupone wote» in local Kiswahili it means «Heal together» and we are working on behalf of the local non-profit organization called «Amani-Institute» which is a socio-cultural movement of young volunteers working for promotion of a culture of peace and sustainable development in eastern the Democratic republic of Congo.

As we live in a region already weakened by the activism of armed groups, we are challenged to educate our communities on preventive measures and the fight against Coronavirus but also and above all solidarity and living together in this period of crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That why, we regularly produce and broadcast radio programs including radio spots and soap operas broadcast to mobilize local communities.

We organize awareness campaigns on the street and in places where the vulnerable live, in particular people living in makeshift camps fleeing community violence or armed conflicts, and we use megaphones, drawing, songs or printed posters. Since containment measures have an impact on the lives of populations already vulnerable because of the deplorable living conditions, we thought of setting up a vegetable garden to supply women survivors of sexual violence and other vulnerable people in our environment.

We also made a small guide of conduct in confinement, to avoid idleness to push several of our young people to moral perversion and others would try to join the ranks of the armed groups active in our region here in the North-Kivu province because they don’t know what to do right now. And as an impact, we reach a lot of people, more than 50 000 people because with the radio campaign we have a large audience and even on the street people are numerous but also in the camps of displaced populations.

And now, we can see people gradually adopting responsible behavior in this period of crisis, but the challenges are still enormous because the situation here does not allow people to control themselves well because many already have a mind wrought by war and violence and they are sometimes suspicious.

But because we are motivated and dynamic young people, we see how to find small solutions with our means on board but also because we master the local context.

What do you think of our approach ?”

FROM: Amani Institute | 4 May 2020

https://amani-institute.org/2020/05/04/coronavirus-in-a-context-of-conflicts-and-humanitarian-crisis-in-eastern-drcongo/

“We’re busy suspending operations and planning to deal with this virus if it comes,” says Morris. “Everybody is hunkered down and taking precautionary measures.”

Life on a remote reserve presents unique challenges in preventing and coping with the virus if it arrives. Basic preventative measures like hand washing are more difficult in communities under boil water advisories. Physical distancing is also a challenge where a mix of poor housing conditions and multi-generational families mean more than a dozen people may live under the same roof. In addition, many families have recently welcomed teens back from Ontario high schools in Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout, putting extra pressure on those households.

“These communities have to deal with tremendous shocks, like floods or fires, on a regular basis,” says Tracey Galloway, assistant professor of anthropology at U of T Mississauga. “Now they are managing in an overwhelming public health emergency.”

The anthropologist and former intensive care nurse is part of an interdisciplinary research group from U of T studying the role that infrastructure, such as airports and ice roads, plays in the health of Indigenous communities in northern Ontario.

“We are trying to understand how communities deal day-to-day, and during emergencies,” Galloway says. “What we’ve learned is how interdependent all of these systems are within communities that have very little ability to withstand the shocks and stresses that come in the normal course of life.”

Northern Indigenous communities face shortages of personal protective equipment for front-line workers and virus testing kits to diagnose the sick. “We don’t have ventilators, gloves or masks – there’s a shortage of supplies,” Morris says. “Everybody is waiting in line, especially when you’re remote.”

While Morris says KI is fortunate to have on-site medical staff – the reserve has medical doctor coverage for three out of four weeks each month – he is concerned that there are not enough nurses to adequately serve the community should the virus arrive.

Sick community members would neet to be evacuated by air ambulance to hospitals hundreds of kilometres away. “We don’t know how effective down south will be at accepting COVID patients if (the virus) does show up in our northern remote communities,” he says.

For now, Morris’ immediate concern is ensuring KI has adequate supplies of food and fuel.

This is the time of year that communities use the ice road to ship in supplies of basic grocery items, building materials and more than two million litres of fuel oil to power electrical and heating systems. Now, the early thaw means northern communities face the costly alternative of flying in necessary supplies.

The situation is forcing Indigenous leaders to reallocate federal program funding to cope with new costs of pandemic priorities. Morris is worried there will be financial penalties later. “Everybody’s feeling the pinch,” he says. “How are we going to adjust when we don’t have planning dollars?”

Galloway (left) says that some remote communities will face an additional challenge if – likely when– the spring floods arrive in northern Ontario. Communities that experience annual flooding, like Kashechewan First Nation, would be forced to evacuate to cities in the south.

“If they flood, the people will have to be evacuated and live in hotels,” says Galloway, adding that Thunder Bay has declared a state of emergency and may not be able to receive evacuees. “They will definitely be at much higher risk of being exposed to the virus. I don’t know how we’ll protect people in that scenario.”

Galloway lauds Indigenous leadership for their quick response to the crisis. “I see strong leadership from organizations like Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Assembly of First Nations,” she says. “They have acted fast on the best available health evidence, and they’re co-ordinated – they’re speaking nation-to-nation with the federal government.

“The public health leaders are telling us that having a co-ordinated, cohesive response is what will protect us. The Indigenous leaders are showing us the way.”

Morris says it’s challenging to stay positive in the face of difficulty. “It’s warm and the snow is melting. You’re confined to your home and you’re not allowed to travel,” he says. “I’d say morale is low.”

“We have to be patient and hope and pray that we make it through. Praying is what we’re doing a lot of nowadays.””

ARTICLE INFORMATION:

Title: ‘Hope and pray that we make it through’: COVID-19 underscores vulnerability of remote communities
Author: Eligh, Blake
Publication(s): University of Toronto News
Date: 21 April 2020
Link: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/hope-and-pray-we-make-it-through-covid-19-underscores-vulnerability-remote-communities

Research published this week in Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS), concludes that trash buried in landfills or incinerated can be an important source of antibiotic-resistance genes in the air. Discarded medications accelerate the evolution of resistance in the bacteria that is found normally in garbage, and that endangers people who live downwind.

The ACS reports that Chinese researchers studied bacteria community and associated antibiotic-resistance genes in the municipal solid waste treatment system of Changzhou, a city in eastern China.

“The researchers collected air samples surrounding a landfill site, a municipal solid waste incinerator and two transfer stations (where garbage is delivered and processed). Air from both the municipal incinerator and the landfill site had higher levels of particulate matter and bacteria than upwind locations. The team identified 16 antibiotic-resistance genes in the air samples and tracked their source to municipal solid waste and leachate in the system. The genes were much more abundant in air downwind from the facilities than upwind.”

There is no reason to think that the Changzhou city dump is unusual. Most if not all waste landfills contribute to the spread of drug-resistant superbugs through the air, so just breathing can be dangerous.”

—–

Title: Superbugs in the Air: Burned Or Buried, Garbage Spread Antibiotic Resistance
Author: Angus, Ian
Publication(s): Climate and Capitalism
Date: 25 March 2020
Link: https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/03/25/municipal-garbage-dumps-spread-antibiotic-resistance/

Thank you to Evnur Taran – a fellow associate editor of Peace Magazine – for sharing this article during the editorial meeting on 7 April 2020. It is alarming to consider that antibiotic resistance could be breeding in garbage dumps and landfills, partially due to the improper discarding of antibiotic medications. It is additionally alarming to consider the implications for communities living downwind from these sites, particularly as some antibiotic resistant microbes may be distributed in air pollution emanating from these sites.

The authors of this article note that Africa has had – as of 24 March 2020 – a slower onslaught of the virus – potentially due to early screening measures implemented at airports – combined with a warmer climate (which is theorized to slow the spread of the virus).

Article Excerpt(s):

“Since its emergence in December 2019, the novel coronavirus has spread rampantly across the globe, overwhelming health systems and cratering the global economy. In the United States—where federal authorities have failed to perform widespread testing for the virus and have therefore been unable to implement the targeted quarantines of infected individuals that have allowed South Korea to defeat the virus with limited disruptions to everyday life—states and cities have been forced to rely on blanket restrictions of movement, including the closure of most schools and businesses. The economic impact of these “social distancing” strategies has been severe, triggering a recession that is expected to rival the Great Depression in its severity, and leading President Trump to call for a reassessment of the response after less than fifteen days—far sooner than epidemiologists recommend.

African nations are unlikely to enjoy this luxury of choice. In the affluent enclaves of Johannesburg or Nairobi, white-collar professionals will be able to homeschool children and telecommute through this crisis, just as professionals are doing in Washington, DC. But more than 70 percent of African urbanites—approximately 200 million people—reside in crowded city slums, with limited access to plumbing or electricity. In those environments, social distancing may be effectively impossible. Some 40 percent of Africans live in water-stressed environments in which obtaining access to clean water—let alone soap—is an insurmountable daily hurdle, and for those populations, even simple measures to prevent the spread of the virus, such as frequent handwashing, will be out of reach. For the 85 percent of Africans who live on less than $5.50 per day, work stoppages will pose an existential threat. Sheltering in place for long periods of time—weeks or more—will simply not be possible. So what will African nations do? Will COVID-19 spread across the African nations as virulently as it has spread through Asia and Europe, or will Africa’s climate and demographics provide some shield?

The answer will vary greatly across and within individual countries. Africa’s smaller, middle-income, and more-industrialized nations (including Senegal, Rwanda, and Botswana) are likely to fare better than large countries that serve as regional transit and economic hubs (like Ethiopia and Nigeria), because they have greater control over their borders and are better equipped to implement social distancing measures than countries with large urban slums and international transit corridors. Countries in conflict (including Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mali) and remote rural villages are also likely to be hit especially hard by COVID-19. There, medical services, electricity, potable water sources, and internet connectivity are mostly lacking. In these least-served and least-accessible areas, news of the virus may spread far more slowly than the disease itself, and COVID-19 will join a list of other killers, including malnutrition and violence. Many coronavirus deaths in conflict and rural zones are likely to remain undiagnosed and unrecorded—there, as in previous epidemics, the extent of suffering may never be fully known.

The coronavirus toll in the crowded megacities and the refugee camps, however, will likely be both visible and terrible. Since the first emergence of the novel coronavirus, epidemiologists have predicted a deadly explosion of cases across the African continent. As in Europe, health care systems are expected to be rapidly overwhelmed. But while Western and Asian nations may attempt to increase their production of needed supplies, African nations do not have the domestic capability to manufacture respirators, medicines, or medical supplies, and may—if they need to rely on humanitarian shipments from donor nations whose own economies have been gutted, whose own hospitals may be overwhelmed and under-resourced, and whose borders may be closed to even humanitarian personnel—rapidly find themselves starved of the basic resources they need to track and treat this disease.

But Africa’s prospects are not unremittingly grim. Many nations have already fallen back on previous experiences containing the Ebola virus, and acted rapidly to institute temperature checks, to cancel international flights, and to impose isolation measures on those who appear ill. These measures may have helped some countries to delay the arrival of COVID-19.

Whether African nations will be able to flatten the curve after COVID-19 begins to spread locally within their populations is a harder question to answer. As the thumbnail case studies that follow indicate, many nations are adopting innovative strategies for containing the spread of the disease. African countries may also, in a best-case scenario, derive some benefit from the climate and unique demographics of the continent. Experts are hoping that the coronavirus will, like seasonal influenza, become less-transmissible in heat, and though we don’t know for sure, some experts have suggested that the continent’s relatively hot climate may help explain the surprisingly slow spread of the virus across Africa.

The continent’s demographics are another potential source of optimism. COVID-19, though virulently contagious, is a disease that is often asymptomatic or mild in youths—and a stunning 70 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of thirty. A mere 4 percent of the population is in the highest-risk age category of over-65. Because this virus afflicts the generations so differently, it is possible that Africa’s experience of coronavirus may vary greatly from that of the aging Western and Asian worlds.

Whether because of the heat, the age of the population, or because African nations were early adopters of screening measures at international airports, the continent’s hospitals have not yet been overrun and only a handful of deaths have been recorded in Sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of the low case load, capital and major cities have already, and especially in the last week, adopted a slew of new measures, from business closures to handwashing stations, to delay the onslaught of the virus.

Outside the major cities, however, there is only a slow spreading of concern. And even within many of the cosmopolitan capitals, misinformation, fake news, and distrust of government authorities is making it harder to restrict movement and limit the size of gatherings. Another source of worry is the critical shortage of hospital beds (African nations generally have fewer than one hospital bed per one thousand people, about one third the capacity of the US) and respirators, which means that only a small fraction of sufferers of the disease can hope for life-saving interventions. And a major unanswered question is how malnutrition, HIV-AIDs, tuberculosis, malaria, or other chronic conditions will interact with COVID-19. If those with compromised immune systems are more likely to suffer worse outcomes, the case fatality rate in Africa may be higher than elsewhere despite the youthfulness of the population. Data on previous epidemics—from the 1918 Spanish flu to the harsh 2002 influenza season—are spotty when it comes to Africa, but suggest that the rate of African deaths may be comparatively high (according to the World Health Organization, the case fatality rate in 2002 was globally less than 0.1 percent, but was 3 percent in Malawi, for example). But in previous epidemics, the vast majority of African deaths have been in children under the age of five—a population that has almost been entirely spared by COVID-19.

As African governments race to divert all available resources to preventing the spread of this disease, they have begun to experience significant economic strains—both from business shut downs and the failing global economy—and they may yet face a significant drop in foreign humanitarian assistance as the donor nations find themselves overwhelmed. Plunging oil prices will decimate the budgets of a number of countries—among them Angola and Nigeria—while the lack of inventory that has resulted from China’s manufacturing and export slowdown threatens business and building activity everywhere in Africa. There is some long-term hope that the coronavirus pandemic, which has put a spotlight on the world’s dangerous dependency on Chinese manufacturing, may ultimately lead to a redirection of supply chains to African and other developing nations. But in the short-term, the economic outlook is probably more dire in Africa than elsewhere.

The Africa Center’s coronavirus coverage will address a series of pressing questions in the days to come:

What will be the economic, political, and social impacts of the virus? How will foreign relations be impacted? And what new security concerns will arise from the pandemic?”

Title: What does the coronavirus mean for Africa?
Author: Bruton, Bronwyn
Publication(s): The Atlantic Council
Date: 24 March 2020
Link: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/africasource/what-does-the-coronavirus-mean-for-africa/

Following this announcement, updated estimates of Iran’s breakout time—the amount of time needed to amass enough fissile material to produce one nuclear weapon—ranged from approximately four to six months. These estimates depend on assumptions about the type of design Iran might be capable of initially using. Implosion systems require less fissile material than gun-type designs. Whatever the exact breakout time might be, most estimates fall within a timespan that health officials seem to indicate might be the duration of the Covid-19 threat.

Whether Iran would attempt to use the cover of Covid-19 to begin a dash for a nuclear weapon is uncertain. However, the loss of “eyes on the ground” in the form of IAEA inspections would probably heighten the worst fears about Iranian proliferation and possibly worsen already dim prospects for cooperation. Even before the coronavirus breakout, Iran had expanded its production of enriched uranium, probably in an attempt to exert pressure and improve its negotiating leverage following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal and its reimposition of sanctions in 2018.

A second and related danger is that, absent the IAEA inspections, there is a greater possibility of miscalculation regarding Iran and its nuclear potential and intentions. Without hard data, US policy makers could begin to fear the worst and assume that Iran was dashing toward a bomb, and it would be difficult to prove otherwise. Other nations, both Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East and other global powers, might also react in unexpected ways, based on insufficient information and fear that Iran was breaking out to produce a nuclear weapon. In any event, lack of information generally leads to instability and whenever nuclear weapons, or the threat of nuclear weapons, is involved, instability could be exceedingly dangerous.

What could, or should, Director General Grossi and the IAEA member states do about this situation to mitigate any potential risks? First, it is essential that any hazards to the health of IAEA inspectors be minimized. The agency must pre-screen its inspectors before they travel to identify those at heightened risk. In addition, inspectors should be equipped to deal with potential contact with the virus by using proper disposable clothing and disinfecting procedures. Inspectors should also be accompanied by medical personnel and should strive to be self-sufficient with food and housing. It is also possible that enhanced technical oversight systems could be installed to temporarily decrease or eliminate the need for inspectors. Although the IAEA has apparently used remote surveillance systems in Iran, the effectiveness of those systems in a situation where inspectors cannot enter Iran will need to be evaluated, and new or upgraded systems may be needed. Such installations would need to be installed by the IAEA in order to be considered reliable, and that would involve the same risks to those personnel as to inspectors in dealing with the virus.

IAEA member states should fully support such efforts so that inspections can continue. Though it might require extraordinary efforts by the IAEA and its board of governors, it is in the world’s interest to have the nuclear watchdog continue its verification programs in Iran despite whatever level of hazard the Covid-19 outbreak presents. Failure to do so could have dire consequences.”

Title: One potential victim of coronavirus? Nuclear inspections in Iran
Author: Moore, George M.
Publication(s): Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Date: 17 March 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/one-potential-victim-of-coronavirus-nuclear-inspections-in-iran/

The majority of African countries were deemed the “least prepared” of all the countries due to poor immunisation.
Given how fast the outbreak is likely to spread, experts warned even top tier nations may struggle to curb the disease.

The report, known as the Global Health Security (GHS) index, was drawn-up by scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Health Security, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).

In their recommendations, the team said governments invest more money in preparing for such events, and do routine simulation exercises.

They also called for more private investment into countries’ pandemic preparations.
The scientists assessed how countries around the world would deal with an inevitable pandemic, by looking at a range of factors.

A world map shows areas that were most, more and least prepared for a global pandemic. Greenland (in grey) was not studied.

Income, border security, health care systems, as well as political, socioeconomic and environmental risk factors that can limit response, were all considered.

The average overall index score was just over 40 out of a possible 100. Scientists say this points “to substantial weaknesses in preparedness”.

But they found that even among the 60 high-income countries assessed, the average score was barely over 50.
Writing in their report, the scientists said: “The Index, which serves as a barometer for global preparedness, is based on a central tenet: a threat anywhere is a threat everywhere.

“Deadly infectious diseases can travel quickly; increased global mobility through air travel means that a disease outbreak in one country can spread across the world in a matter of hours.”

The report comes a month after a group headed by a former World Health Organisation (WHO) chief issued a stark warning that Disease X was on the horizon.

The report, named A World At Risk, said current efforts to prepare for outbreaks in the wake of crises such as Ebola are “grossly insufficient”.

It was headed by Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister and director-general of the WHO,

She said in the report: “The threat of a pandemic spreading around the globe is a real one.

“A quick-moving pathogen has the potential to kill tens of millions of people, disrupt economies and destabilise national security.”

The team drew up a map of the world with a list of possible infections which could trigger the hypothetical outbreak.

These were split into “newly emerging” and “re-emerging/resurging”. Among the former were the Ebola, Zika and Nipah viruses, and five types of flu.

And the latter included West Nile virus, antibiotic resistance, measles, acute flaccid myelitis, Yellow fever, Dengue, plague and human monkeypox.

A report last month called A World At Risk listed dozens of illnesses which the experts suggested had the potential to trigger an outbreak which could spiral out of control.

The report referenced the damage done by the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and said modern advances in international travel would help the disease spread faster.

A century ago the Spanish flu pandemic infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million people.
But more recently an Ebola epidemic in West Africa claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people.

Another outbreak of the deadly virus has killed 2,100 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the fatalities are rising.
Leo Abruzzese, senior global advisor at The Economist Intelligence Unit, who helped compile the report, said the report helped to identify important gaps in global preparedness.

“Without a way of identifying gaps in the system, we’re much more vulnerable than we need to be,” he said.
“The index is specific enough to provide a roadmap for how countries can respond, and gives donors and funders a tool for directing their resources.”

TOP 10 COUNTRIES BEST PREPARED

United States – 83.5
United Kingdom – 77.9
Holland – 75.6
Australia – 75.5
Canada – 75.3
Thailand – 73.2
Sweden – 72.1
Denmark – 70.4
South Korea – 70.2
Finland – 68.7

TOP 10 COUNTRIES WORST PREPARED

Equatorial Guinea – 16.2
Somalia – 16.6
North Korea – 17.5
São Tomé and Príncipe – 17.7
Marshall Islands – 18.2
Yemen – 18.5
Kiribati – 19.2
Syria – 19.9
Guinea Bissau – 20
Gabon – 20

“We’ll be working closely with established networks of universities that are already partnering to try and understand how we can work more as a team to be able to understand these spillovers, disease prevention, how what we know about animals feeds over to protecting the health of people and vice versa,” Smith said. “Those are some of the basic ideas of why we’re doing this as a health professional school that has both veterinary and human health represented and bringing the environment in as well.”

The American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Medical Association have endorsed the One Health approach since 2008. Smith said UC Davis began 10 to 15 years ago to work collaboratively to promote the health of people and animals in their shared environments.

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While the UCD-led consortium just secured the grant, Smith said, the university has worked with U.S. AID for 10 years on a $200 million project known as PREDICT to train private-sector experts in Africa and Asia to safely do One Health surveillance in areas where wildlife and humans coexisted.

That capability didn’t exist in many countries on those continents. That’s why Ebola, swine flu and other pandemics caught the world off guard.

“We’ve really established teams in these countries, where we expect new viruses to spill over from animals to people,” Smith said. The teams “are prepared to detect them earlier, respond earlier and contain outbreaks. … The One Health approach has really built the expertise of the in-country teams. They’re now much more able to be of use to their (government) ministries and their universities.”

Smith said more than 6,000 people in 30 countries not only gained marketable skills in disease detection, but also learned how to compete against foreign businesses. In a testament to their success, UC Davis’ One Health Institute reported they found more than 1,000 viruses that pose a public health concern.

UCD continues to work with some of those teams, but it was close to wrapping up work on the PREDICT project when U.S. AID announced it was seeking a team to lead the second phase of the One Health Workforce project. Since PREDICT was almost over, Smith said, the UCD team decided to take on new work.

The team won the grant, beating out a consortium led by the University of Minnesota and Tufts University that led the initial, five-year phase of One Health WorkForce.

“We will continue to look for ways to continue to collaborate with the previous groups because they did a lot of great work,” Smith said. “We would love help that continue. We have reached out to them to explore how that might work.”

UCD’s One Health Institute will work alongside Asian and African academics to design and execute activities such as developing sustainable training programs that will teach current and future professionals the skills and competencies needed to address the complex health challenges of zoonotic diseases.

In some cases, Smith said, the consortium’s team will be working with the same people they worked with on the PREDICT project.

Smith’s consortium includes not only UC Davis colleagues from other academic disciplines but also a range of experts from Columbia University, EcoHealth Alliance, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Ata Health Strategies, the University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories.

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article235973487.html?fbclid=IwAR2za5XzQVYJmm2tqz50PzF58Z4x1KWzwTRsqvvDRCHxDGxnd3-EeCHXPvU#storylink=cpy

From the 1970s, the island has been implicated in a number of sinister incidents. In 1971, a young scientist fell ill after a research vessel, the Lev Berg, strayed into a brownish haze. Days later, she was diagnosed with smallpox. Mysteriously, she had already been vaccinated against the disease. Though she recovered, the outbreak went on to infect a further nine people back in her hometown, three of whom died. One of these was her younger brother.

A year later, the corpses of two missing fishermen were found nearby, drifting in their boat. It’s thought that they had caught the plague. Not long afterwards, locals started landing whole nets of dead fish. No one knows why. Then in May 1988, 50,000 saiga antelope which had been grazing on a nearby steppe dropped dead – in the space of an hour.”

[…]

“In 1988, nine years after an anthrax leak at Compound 19 led to the deaths of at least 105 people, the Soviets finally decided to get rid of their cache. Huge vats of anthrax spores were mixed with bleach and transported the port town of Aralsk, on the shores of the Aral Sea (now 16 miles (25km) inland), where they were loaded onto barges and transported to Vozrozhdeniya. Some 100 to 200 tonnes of anthrax slurry was hastily dumped in pits and forgotten. Most of the time, anthrax bacteria live as spores, an inactive form with extreme survival skills. They’ll shrug off pretty much anything you care to throw at them – from baths of noxious disinfectants to being roasted for up to two minutes at 180C (356F). […] The precise location of the anthrax cache was never disclosed, but as it turns out this wasn’t a problem. The pits were so enormous, they were clearly visible in photos taken from space. Viable spores were found in several soil samples, and the US pledged $6m (£4.6m) for a project to clean the place up.”

This demonstrates not just the alarming nature of biological and chemical weapons – but their legacy across time and place. An additional alarming trend is that the island is a target for scrap metal harvesters – due to the severely reduced agricultural and fishing industry. Vozrozhdeniya Island is a “perfect storm” of intersections of various threats and measures. The island routinely faces massive dust storms, as well. Nick Middleton touched on the island in one of their recent books.

Link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170926-the-deadly-germ-warfare-island-abandoned-by-the-soviets

Could pathogens be in a natural “cold storage” in old graves – an essential climate-change/pandemic time-bomb? How deep were bodies buried in the Arctic during the diphtheria, smallpox, and Spanish flu epidemics – given the levels of permafrost and remote settlements? Norway has certainly considered this risk (re: Arctic graves and diseases) – as Svalbard has prohibited people from dying on the island! That is, you are not allowed to be buried on Svalbard — and if you are gravely ill, they fly you to Oslo or Tromso for medical care. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for diphtheria – though it is unlikely one exists for Spanish flu – and there were reports several years ago that the United Nations was destroying over 90% of its smallpox vaccine in storage due to budgetary and space constraints.

i.e.
1. Foundations of evidence-based practice in healthcare
2. Biology and management of weeds and invasive plants
3. Environmental public health
4. Media writing and editing
5. Fundamentals of pharmacology
6. Farm to table food safety
7. Introduction to the science of cancer
8. Molecular epidemiology
9. Life on earth: biomes, climates, ecology, and evolution
10. Introduction to pharmacy
11. Earths environment: soil, water and air
12. Energy and earth: fossil fuels, alternative and renewal energy

These courses are free and open to the public and cover aspects of agriculture, human biology, veterinary medicine and public health.

The collection can be found online here: https://www.canvas.net/browse/osu/global-one-health

Read the full article here: https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/06/new-institute-at-u-of-g-to-focus-on-one-health/