Hot Topics in IPC: America and/vs Global Health

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America and/vs Global Health

There’s no way around it: the news that President Trump had issued several Executive Orders (EO) impacting global health on January 20^th created widespread concern. Three key issues will likely affect US efforts in global health, pandemic prevention, and One Health. First, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), which will be devastating to global health efforts, ranging from biosurveillance to vaccine delivery, global data and sample sharing, pandemic prevention, research and development, addressing social inequities, etc. (The list could truly go on and on.) In this EO, other indicators point to a decrease in support for global health security, such as Section 2(e), which states. “The Director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy shall review, rescind, and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable.”

Second, an executive order (EO) focused on environmental protection withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, a widely supported agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Emerging infectious diseases and climate change go hand in hand, so even if we’re only worried about germs, this will have rippling implications. Third, an EO on foreign aid will likely pull back on key efforts abroad to strengthen health, such as those done through United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State. The proposed assessment of US foreign development aid programs noted in the EO will occur in the future, but agencies like USAID have spent the last 60 years working to strengthen global health and improve resilience to infectious diseases...and often do so on shoestring budgets.

“Diseases knows no borders” is only partially accurate—some borders and countries are inherently more porous, more vulnerable, and even more oblivious to their vulnerabilities. Some are more protected and resilient to infectious disease threats, but as we saw with COVID-19, the US may not be as robust in global health as we think. In the midst of an unprecedented H5N1 outbreak, mpox cases, a newly identified Marburg case in Tanzania, increasing vaccine hesitancy, and surging influenza, now is simply not the time for a reduction in global health partnerships.

US Health Agency Comms

Do you love your CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and weekly reports on the latest outbreaks? It’s being reported that the White House has “instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts.” This would impact news releases on the H5N1 outbreak from the CDC, alerts from the Food and Drug Administration, and new studies from the National Institutes of Health.

In case you need some additional reading this week, these were some insightful articles.”

• Insights on H5N1 response from Katie Wu, PhD - Bird Flu Is a National Embarrassment
• Avian influenza and raw pet food concerns