One Health Trust

Happy Diwali from the OHT India Team! ✨ May the festival of lights bring health, happiness, and well-being to all. Learn more about our work that helps improve global health here: https://lnkd.in/dxMqYfbz #Diwali2024 #OneHealth Jyoti Kumari, Varun M., Prerna Gauniyal, Rishiraj Bhagawati, Divija Samria, Seshadri Dutta, Aiswarya S, Namitha Prabhu, Ambika Lall

Smallpox may be gone but it’s got a cousin called mpox, and that virus is now spreading fast across parts of Africa. As of October 2024, this mpox outbreak had infected more than 40,000 people, mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,000 people have died from the infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in August 2024. Officials are distributing smallpox vaccines to try to control it. The viruses are closely enough related so researchers believe that modern smallpox vaccines can protect people safely against mpox. But the rollout is slow. It’s not clear why the virus has started spreading in households, but it’s infecting and killing more and more children. To make matters worse, people are desperate for medicines to prevent infection and help treat symptoms, which include fevers and a rash. They’re seeking antibiotics, which cannot treat a virus. This inappropriate use of antibiotics can drive drug resistance. This is the second time mpox has been declared a public health emergency by the WHO since 2022. A slightly different strain of mpox has been spreading since then through close contact, often sexual and often among men who have sex with men. Mpox is even now showing up in new cities and countries in North America and Europe. Nodar Kipshidze, Senior Research Analyst at the One Health Trust, says the virus spreads easily because people often don’t know they have it. It’s also not clear where it originally came from, although small rodents and other mammals can spread it. In this episode of One World, One Health, Nodar tells us mpox is causing a lot of confusion, and we need to ensure we learn from previous outbreaks and share resources globally to stop the spread and save lives. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/dUuFHGtd #Mpox #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #OneHealth #InfectiousDiseases

Check out our blog by the One Health Trust’s Dr. Samantha Serrano and Dr. Erta Kalanxhi on key takeaways from the 79th United Nations General Assembly Week (UNGA) Week—an important milestone in global efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The blog covers panel discussions OHT’s co-hosted event on the sidelines of UNGA, the UNGA high-level meeting on AMR, and events hosted by partners and colleagues on AMR during UNGA week. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/dFMwKqfA #UNGA #AMR

🎃 For Halloween week, learn about the virus that has been a source of inspiration for terrifying zombie stories. Rabies is one of the scariest viruses known to humankind. It kills almost 100% of its victims if they don’t receive vaccines before symptoms show and it kills close to 60,000 people a year worldwide. Animals can carry and transmit the virus even if they don’t have symptoms, and people can develop a fatal and untreatable infection even if they do not know they’ve been exposed by a bite, scratch, or a drop of saliva. On our podcast, One World, One Health, Dr. Abi Tamim Vanak of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India says the One Health approach can help reduce the spread of rabies. Listen to the episode to find out how! Listen here: https://ow.ly/Z8XL50TU9t0 #Zombies #HalloweenWeek #RabiesVirus #RabiesVaccination #OneHealth

This week’s digest covers an article on new The Lancet findings that AMR-related deaths among adults 70 and older skyrocketed between 1990 and 2021. When asked for comment, OHT’s Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan called for expanded antibiotic access across all age groups. While developing new antimicrobials is essential as first-line treatments gain resistance, low- and middle-income countries also grapple with the issue of limited access to antibiotics. Improved access and enhanced infection prevention and control efforts (including food safety and hygiene practices) could avert 92 million global deaths between 2025 and 2050. Read the article in Euronews here: https://lnkd.in/dAEUFyr7 More digest here: https://lnkd.in/dAxtwQsk #AMR #AntibioticAccess

Antimicrobial resistance (#AMR) is a major problem but we have the tools to reduce its toll and help keep infections treatable. In The Lancet Series on Antimicrobial Resistance: The need for sustainable access to effective antibiotics, experts led by the One Health Trust found the number of deaths due to AMR in low- and middle-income countries could be reduced by around 750,000 a year with preventive measures we already know. -Improved water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure and access #WASH -Better pediatric vaccine coverage #Vaccines -Improved infection prevention and control in hospitals #IPC Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dyU7eASR #AMR

Do you want to become a leader and advance your career in Global Health? Explore a PhD in Data Sciences for Global Health, a full-time program jointly offered by the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and the One Health Trust. Hear from our first cohort of students about their PhD journey so far! Learn more about the program here: https://ow.ly/7a2x50TSe50 #GlobalHealth #DataScience #OneHealth #StudentExperience #HigherEducation Danny Muzata

Although we have been talking about #AMR for many years, the real problem is the lack of access to effective antibiotics (#AEA). Even drug-resistant infections respond to the right antibiotic and resistance itself is created by choosing the wrong antibiotic. Here is a podcast in conversation with the The Lancet on what #AMR and #AEA mean and what we can do to prevent 7.7 million bacterial-infection related deaths each year. You can listen here.

This week's digest includes an article addressing how mpox outbreaks in Africa may exacerbate the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. Dr. Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa CDC spoke at a UN General Assembly (UNGA) side event co-hosted by the One Health Trust and warned that mpox transmission is driving over-the-counter antibiotic use in Africa as people desperately seek treatment and prevention. He cited data from an Africa CDC report in which an assessment of the laboratory network in 14 African countries found that just 1.3 percent of laboratories had the capacity to conduct AMR surveillance, likely leading to underreporting of the true AMR burden in the continent. With 840 weekly deaths due to mpox reported in early September, Dr. Kaseya called for increased AMR surveillance and interventions that target vaccine hesitancy to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use. Read the article in the BMJ here: https://lnkd.in/d8iMyx-a More digest here: https://lnkd.in/dAxtwQsk #MPox #AMR #UNGA #OneHeath

A recent study by One Health Trust researchers and colleagues, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows how routine childhood vaccinations against 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘰𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘱𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘦 and 𝘏𝘢𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘻𝘢𝘦 type B in India are making a difference! Since these vaccines were introduced into India’s national immunization program in the mid-2010s, antibiotic use has significantly decreased. They found that increases in childhood vaccination coverage between 2004 and 2016 likely reduced attributable antibiotic demand by as much as 93.4 percent among the poorest quintile in India. If vaccination rates continue to rise we could see even more reductions in antibiotic consumption by 2028 and greater health equity! Read the study published in The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia here: https://lnkd.in/dSCawhvY #ChildhoodVaccination #Immunization #AMR Amit Summan Arindam Nandi Chirag Kumar Ramanan Laxminarayan Eili Klein