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The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security will host a pandemic tabletop exercise on May 15, 2018, in Washington, DC, to illustrate high-level strategic decisions and policies that the United States and the world will need to pursue in order to prevent a severe pandemic, or diminish its consequences should prevention fail. The day-long exercise, "Clade X," will simulate a series of National Security Council-convened meetings of 10 government leaders, played by prominent individuals who previously occupied senior leadership positions within the government. Players will be presented with a scenario that highlights unresolved real-world policy issues that could be solved with sufficient political will and attention now and in the future. For more information, click here.
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| Today's Headlines: November 21, 2017 |
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Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Plague Outbreak Madagascar--20 November 2017 (
WHO Africa) WHO continues to support the Ministry of Public Health and other national authorities in Madagascar to monitor and respond to the outbreak of plague. From 6 to 17 November 2017, 216 cases of plague (1 confirmed, 20 probable and 195 suspect) were reported to WHO. The date of onset of the last case of bubonic plague was 7 November 2017 and the last confirmed case of pneumonic plague was reported on 14 November 2017.
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Zika-related Nerve Damage Caused by Immune Response to the Virus (
Science Daily) The immune system's response to the Zika virus, rather than the virus itself, may be responsible for nerve-related complications of infection, according to a Yale study. This insight could lead to new ways of treating patients with Zika-related complications, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, the researchers said.
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Domestic Preparedness & Response
A Calculation Tool and Process to Pre-position Pharmaceuticals for Anthrax Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (
Health Security) Anthrax, caused by
Bacillus anthracis, is considered a severe bioterrorism threat because of its high mortality rate. The Chicago Healthcare System Coalition for Preparedness and Response aims to pre-position antibiotic medical countermeasures at healthcare facilities in order to provide on-site anthrax post-exposure prophylaxis. Pharmacists proposed moving toward a new process that involved the development of a standardized calculation methodology for acquiring supply drugs.
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Government Affairs & National Security
Is Trump's NASA Nominee Ready to Tackle Climate Change? (Wired) Science and the people who study it have taken a pretty big beating during the first year of the Trump administration. Trump has appointed climate science skeptics and outright deniers to head the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt), the Department of Energy (Rick Perry), and the Council on Environmental Quality (Kathleen Hartnett). Trump's nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--the nation's lead agency on both short-term weather and long-term climate forecasting--is a businessman who hasn't uttered a single public statement on climate change.
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Global Health Security
Antimicrobial Resistance: An Underrated Biological Threat (
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, predicted an age when the efficacy of antibiotics would diminish and wither away. Sadly, it seems as if we're nearing that point. Highly virulent and deadly outbreaks of multi-drug-resistant organisms are becoming increasingly common. Even prestigious hospitals, like the US National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, are not immune to the spread of resistant organisms.
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After Polio: Why Eradication Is an Unmissable Opportunity for Immunization (
Vaccines work) International financing for polio and global immunisation is changing. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a partnership which supports around US$1 billion in annual investments in polio eradication efforts, is winding down. When polio is eradicated, with certification hopefully taking place in 2020 or 2021, GPEI will have fulfilled its mandate and cease to exist. This process has already begun, and financial support from GPEI to countries will halve between 2017 and 2019. Half of GPEI's 16 priority countries, which receive the majority of its support, are also preparing for or progressing through the process of transitioning from Gavi support - working towards full financial responsibility for their own immunisation programmes.
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Rethinking the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention? (
Health Security) The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction has been in force since 1975. The convention was the first arms control treaty to ban an entire class of weapons, and it has served as the absolute norm against the use of biological weapons. The core of the BTWC has been and remains Article I, in which member state parties agreed "... never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain microbial or other biological agents, or toxins ... that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes."
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Medicine & Public Health
Digital Pills Successfully Monitor Opioid Use After Injury (
Science Daily) Investigators report on the results from a pilot study of 15 individuals who received a prescription to take oxycodone digital pills as needed following treatment for acute fractures. The team found that the opioid-naïve patients self-administered opioids to manage pain for only a brief period and only took a fraction of the number of pills they were given.
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Science & Technology
How Innovation is Improving Vaccine Delivery (
Linkedin) Private-sector innovation can generate significant global health gains, but scaling-up innovation in developing countries can be a challenge. This is why Gavi recently convened a discussion in Silicon Valley with leaders from the business community, philanthropic organizations, venture funds, and academia - including Y Combinator, Salesforce, Google.org and Tencent - to discuss how Gavi can facilitate vaccine delivery in a way that both meets global health priorities and benefits the companies delivering care.
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BARDA Supports a Rapid, Deployable, Sensitive Diagnostic Platform to Diagnose Anthrax (
ASPR Blog) In the wake of an anthrax attack, medical responders need to quickly determine who has been infected so that they can be effectively treated. A rapid, accurate diagnostic test is an essential tool for doctors and other health professionals to effectively triage people who may be infected with anthrax. Such a tool has been long requested by medical responders as a critical component of anthrax preparedness.
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Using Technology to Advance Global Health: Proceedings of a Workshop (
National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine: Health and Medicine Division) Applications of digital health are being used to reduce inefficiencies, improve access, reduce costs, increase quality, and personalize care. However, despite the growth of the digital health sector, communities in low- and middle-income countries often miss out on the benefits of digital health's potential. To explore how the use of technology can facilitate progress toward globally recognized health priorities, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Forum on Public-Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety hosted a 1-day workshop which featured presentations and discussions to examine the use of technology to advance global and national health priorities in LMICs.
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Other 21st Century Threats
The Thick Red Line: Implications of the 2013 Chemical-Weapons Crisis for Deterrence and Transatlantic Relations (
Survival: Global Politics & Strategy) Whether or not American policy after the 2013 Syrian chemical-weapons attack was wise, its execution was bungled, causing unnecessary harm to the US-France relationship. In summer 2013, the Syrian regime launched a large-scale chemical-weapons attack against its own people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, an event that left many people dead, disturbed France-US relations and reverberated around the world with potentially profound consequences for deterrence.
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What an Unfolding Humanitarian Disaster in a US-protected Enclave Tells Us About American Strategy in Syria (
War on the Rocks) The Tanaf base in Syria's southeastern desert had been, in some tellings, a key front in the US campaign to roll back Iranian influence in the Middle East. For one overheated moment, Tanaf was where America would block an Iranian "land bridge" linking Iran to Lebanon via Syria and Iraq. Now the land bridge is a reality, but Washington's refusal to cede Tanaf is a demonstration of its unwillingness to fold under pressure from Damascus and its Iranian and Russian allies. Tanaf is also, in theory, useful leverage on the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
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Why It's So Tough to Keep Antibiotics out of Your Turkey (
Wired) The movement to raise meat without routine antibiotics was started three years ago by Perdue Farms, the fourth-largest chicken company in the US. Other poultry companies followed, making "no antibiotics ever" chicken commonplace now. But "turkeys are much more difficult, probably 10 times more difficult, to raise antibiotic-free than chickens are," Pittman says. "Any little thing throws them off."
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