Global Health

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The world is facing multiple health challenges. These range from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the  health impacts of environmental pollution and climate change and multiple humanitarian crises.   

To address these and other threats, 2019 sees the start of the World Health Organization’s new 5-year strategic plan – the 13th General Programme of Work. This plan focuses on a triple billion target:  ensuring 1 billion more people benefit from access to universal health coverage, 1 billion more people are protected from health emergencies and 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being. Reaching this goal will require addressing the threats to health from a variety of angles. 

Here are 10 of the many issues that will demand attention from WHO and health partners in 2019.

1.  Air pollution and climate change

2.  Noncommunicable diseases

3.  Global influenza pandemic

4.  Fragile and vulnerable settings

5.  Antimicrobial resistance

6.  Ebola and other high-threat pathogens

Infectious disease experts have had plenty to worry about in recent decades, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Zika. But one disease scares them above all others—influenza. That’s right, the flu.

news.emory.edu - by Martha McKenzie - December 2018

Even though many people dismiss and misunderstand it—calling everything from a cold to a stomach bug “the flu”— influenza actually claims 12,000 to 56,000 lives in the U.S. every year. And that’s in a normal flu season.

Every so often, a flu pandemic emerges. That’s when a new strain appears that is so different from what has circulated before that people have no immunity to it. A hundred years ago, the 1918 H1N1 pandemic swept the globe infecting about a third of the world’s population and killing 50 million to 100 million people. Since then, there have been three more pandemics, in 1957, 1968, and 2009.

The next pandemic, say experts, is a question of when, not if. Are we ready?

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In the next 6-9 months, the following countries are expected to deteriorate significantly leading to a spike in #humanitarian needs: https://t.co/mf3f5iyUqW pic.twitter.com/Q000xiembR

— ACAPS (@ACAPSproject) December 26, 2018

In the next 6-9 months, the following countries are expected to deteriorate significantly leading to a spike in #humanitarian needs:

CLICK HERE - ACAPS - CrisisInSight: Global Risk Analysis

Slides of human tissue at the University of Arizona taken by British military pathologist William Rolland a century ago.  MAMTA POPAT FOR STAT

statnews.com - by Helen Branswell - December 5, 2018

Late one night Michael Worobey began poking around on the internet, looking for descendants of a World War I British military doctor named William Rolland.

Rolland, a pathologist, had written a report in 1917, the year before the start of the Spanish flu. It described cases of British soldiers in France who had contracted an unusually fatal respiratory illness.

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