Results for Op-Ed Global Health

As government mandated lockdowns to combat the coronavirus pandemic affect a rising share of the global population, fewer will die of COVID-19, as well as other transmissible diseases. But how should we weigh those benefits against the costs of unemployment, social isolation, and widespread bankruptcies? By Peter Singer and Michael Plant.

As the coronavirus pandemic shuts down the world’s economies, stock markets plummet, and unemployment rises, policymakers will be forced to figure out how to contain the outbreak while preventing financial and economic collapse. Most economic proposals in developed countries focus on cash payments to people, deferred tax payments, and business bailouts. But biomedicine is critical to saving the economy ...a simple immunity test could tell us who doesn’t need to be taken out of economic circulation... and impede an economic Armageddon.- Mark Roe.

Like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of why we need multilateralism in a globalized world. Rather than resorting to thinly veiled racism and isolationist policies, global leaders – particularly the United States – should have started organizing a collective response weeks ago. China’s experience with the virus in January and February is likely to be repeated in much of the rest of the world in March and April. We should be preparing intelligently...not succumbing to irrational panic. By Kevin Rudd.

An account of trauma will serve as a reminder to leaders around the world that violence, mental and sexual trauma, and substance abuse are interrelated issues that can have a deep and lasting impact on the lives of children. The evidence for this is overwhelming. This includes online abuse. The impact of violence lasts long after the abuse itself. Victims often experience lifelong social, emotional, and cognitive consequence and are more likely to become abusers themselves. By Zoleka Mandela, Etienne Krug, and Howard Taylor.

The immune system – an intricate network of cells, tissues, and organs – is the human body’s primary mechanism for staying healthy. Decoding it should be central to our efforts to understand and fight illness, whether non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, or infectious ones such as tuberculosis, malaria, and Ebola. By fully leveraging the power of our immune systems, we could find new ways to fight disease everywhere. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will be the keys to this achievement - because of the vast size and complexity of the human immune system. It is billions of times larger than the human genome. By Wayne Koff.

One of the biggest obstacles to reducing the rate of unplanned pregnancies is the lack of sex education in schools. If more teenagers had access to sex education and contraception, fewer girls would have their lives interrupted by pregnancy. Only by empowering women and girls with the resources to control their reproduction will the grim statistics that have long burdened Guyana – and many other countries – begin to change for the better. By Patricee Douglas

Each year, some 700,000 people die from drug-resistant infections worldwide. But superbugs also pose a threat to the effectiveness of modern medicine; if left unaddressed, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could make more infections untreatable, cancer therapies ineffective, routine surgeries impossible, and even childbirth unsafe. By Seth Berkley and Jeremy Farrar

The addictive qualities of sugar are embedded in its economics. Not everyone who is exposed to sugar becomes addicted; but, as with alcohol, many do. In fact, sugar’s allure is a big reason why the processed food industry’s current profit margin is 5% (up from 1%), and why so many of us are sick, fat, stupid, broke, depressed, and just plain miserable. Robert H. Lustig.

For now, I share the excitement of many that a new tool to tackle HIV may be on the horizon. This prospect will be a topic of much discussion when prevention strategists gather in Amsterdam this week for the 22nd International AIDS Conference. But, no matter what becomes of this latest vaccine-related discovery, the world will still have a long way to go before HIV is eradicated. To increase our chances of success, prevention programming must remain at the top of the agenda.