Top 5 health threats facing the world in 2015

What will 2015 bring by way of the world’s health?  If we had benefit, perhaps, of the wisdom of Nostradamus, or the vision of a Stephen King, perhaps we could see into the future.  Unfortunately we don’t have an evidence-based crystal ball. But these are the issues reason would suggest will set the world’s health agenda next year:

1) Drug-resistant infections are expected to soon kill more people than cancer — if we don’t act fast

You’ll be hearing a lot more about antimicrobial resistance in 2015 because we are literally running out of effective antibiotics.

It’s natural for bacteria and viruses to evolve and slowly resist the drugs that we invent for treating the infections they cause. But for decades, we’ve been speeding up their evolution by overusing antimicrobials when they’re not needed, by not completing prescribed courses of treatment, and by breaking infection control protocols in hospitals where these superbugs can easily spread.

In the past we’ve just invented new medications when the old ones became less effective. Unfortunately that strategy isn’t sustainable: there have been no new discoveries of distinct classes of antibacterials since 1987.

Illustration of the discovery void in antibiotics. (Via Clinical Microbiology Review)

The deepening antimicrobial resistance is scary when it’s coupled with this discovery void: so much of our health depends on antibiotics that work. It’s not just wounds, sore throats, or STDs that need treating. Much of contemporary medical care relies on antibiotics to stop infection. Anyone who has gone through a cancer treatment, an organ transplant, a hip replacement, or a complicated pregnancy — who has a friend that has — benefited from these drugs. That pretty much means all of us.

Governments are finally picking up speed in trying to thwart this crisis. Several US and international responses are planned for next year. The World Health Organization will be publishing a “Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance” in May 2015. The O’Neill Reviewin the United Kingdom will publish its findings, building on preliminary results from last week that found antimicrobial resistance will result in at least 10 million extra deaths per year (more than projected cancer deaths) and cost the world economy up to $100 trillion by 2050. There will also be action closer to home: antimicrobial resistance will be a key part of the Obama Administration’s Global Health Security Agenda.

2) Ebola hysteria is over. But it shouldn’t be.

Just because Ebola hysteria has died down doesn’t mean this public-health issue will be any less urgent. This year marked the worst-ever Ebola outbreak and the first time we saw international spread of this deadly virus. The fallout from the epidemic isn’t going to be easy to fix.

The economies of West Africa have been severely damaged: people have lost their jobs as a result of Ebola, children have been home from school, there has been widespread food shortages. The outbreak has done untold damage to health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Hundreds of doctors and nurses died on the front line, and these were countries that didn’t have many health workers to begin with.

We know that during this Ebola crisis people have not been getting the routine health attention they need, including childhood immunizations and pregnancy care. So the global health community is going to need to coalesce around the damage control from this epidemic; that’s after stopping transmission in the three most-affected countries, which still hasn’t happened.

There is a potential silver lining to the anticipated attention to Ebola next year. Drug companies are racing to develop vaccines and therapies, so 2015 might actually bring the first-ever Ebola treatment or preventative product  to market. (There are currently more than a dozen Ebola drugs in development, but so far none has been proven to work in humans or approved for sale.) This is a big deal considering the virus was discovered in 1976 and has mostly been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry.

As soon as the first drug or vaccine successfully makes its way through clinical trials, it could hit the market in record time. This past week, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law that will allow the company that develops a promising therapy to get priority review by the Food and Drug Administration, meaning any application would be swiftly processed. This amounts to a massive incentive to continue pushing hard for an Ebola cure.

Read more at Vox.com.

About Post Author

Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.

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