This study investigated how inhabitants of Mukuru informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya in 2021 experienced climate change and its health impacts, and assessed related knowledge, attitudes and practices, using a cross-sectional study. Out of 402 study participants, 76% had heard of climate change before the interview, 91% reported that climate change was affecting their community, and 93% were concerned with the health-related impact of climate change. Having lived in Mukuru for more than 10 years and living in a dwelling close to the riverside were factors significantly associated with experiencing a climate change related impact, including chronic respiratory conditions, vector-borne diseases, infectious diarrhoea, malnutrition and cardiovascular disease. With most respondents knowledgeable about climate change and experiencing its impact, the authors propose that policy makers, planners and researchers to work locally with affected communities on mitigation and adaption strategies.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Regional vaccine production features in the draft pandemic accord, but there is still a long road before this becomes a reality. Aspen Pharmacare invested millions of dollars in scaling up its South African production plant to make COVID-19 vaccines – yet it never sold a single vial. Three key factors combined to undermine Aspen’s vaccines. First, despite the hype about the need for African-produced vaccines, African governments failed to buy the locally-made vaccines. While the pandemic accord currently being negotiated is almost certain to support regional vaccine production, setting this up is complex and the COVID-era failures offer a number of sobering and cautionary lessons. Then Aspen became caught in a political stand-off between Africa and Europe about the fate of African-produced vaccines which delayed production by months. When that was eventually resolved, the world had fallen for mRNA vaccines and no longer wanted the viral vector vaccine that Aspen had been licensed to produce by Johnson & Johnson. With the waning of COVID-19, maintaining countries’ and companies’ interest in building regional vaccine manufacturing ability is a challenge and the authors suggest that Aspen’s difficulties should be well noted.
A consortium of African civil society organisations has kick-started a campaign to change the continent’s situation regarding vaccines and other essential pharmaceutical products. Afya Na Haki, a Kampala-based health policy thinktank is working with partners from Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe in a programme called “Advancing Regional Vaccine Manufacturing and Access in Africa (ARMA). ARMA programme’s objective is “advancing African advocacy and research approaches that strategically enhance vaccine manufacturing and access in Africa,” T to ensure that commitments and resolutions made by the African Union and individual African countries are actually implemented.
he global baby food market has grown from US$ 9.6 billion in 2010 to US$ 17.9 billion in 2022. Emerging economies offer opportunities for baby food manufacturers and now represent half of all global baby food sales. The authors used data from Euromonitor International to assess sales trends of milk formula, growing-up formula and baby foods during the past decade as well as the level of sugar sold in the infant and toddler feeding sector. The consumption of commercially prepared baby foods in many cases may exceed consumption of homemade foods for infants and toddlers, with concerns about the nutritional composition, sweet taste and long-term health effects of these products. The data raise major questions about the role infant and toddler food companies play in rising global obesity levels and the double burden of malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries. The diets of infants and young children worldwide are undoubtedly becoming increasingly highly processed, a trend mirrored by increased global consumption of ultra-processed foods. The five largest global formula companies are Nestlé, Danone, Abbott, RFC and RBMJ with four out of these five companies present in more than 100 countries. The authors observe that policy-makers need to ensure these products and the companies who manufacture them are more closely monitored and their marketing more tightly regulated.
The continent of Africa contains more than 50 countries, but, as Visual Capitalist details, just five countries account for more than half of total wealth on the continent: South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, and Kenya. Despite recent setbacks in Africa’s largest economies, wealth creation has been strong in a number of areas, and total private wealth is now estimated to be US$2.1 trillion. There are an estimated 21 billionaires in Africa today. Drawing from the latest Africa Wealth Report, this article looks at where all that wealth is concentrated around the continent.
An open letter to Bill Gates from the Community Alliance for Global Justice and co-signed by 50 other organisations warns that Gates fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem of food insecurity as relating to low productivity, leading him to recommend the replication of Green Revolution technologies, including more fertilizer. However, the letter points out that the world does not need to increase production as much as to assure more equitable access to food. Moreover, the authors assert that the Green Revolution did very little to reduce the number of hungry people in the world and caused long-term soil degradation, and increased inequality and indebtedness. The letter points to the many tangible, ongoing proposals and projects that work to boost productivity and food security such as agro-ecological programs, and invites Gates to step back and learn from those on the ground.
While not always labelled commercial determinants of health (CDOH), some policy attention has been given in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to both harms and benefits of commercial impacts on health, particularly from harmful products and processes, and noting rising non-communicable diseases. This discourse analysis highlights differing interests and lenses among the multiple policy actors involved; the forms of narrative, agential and structural power used to advance and contest commercial policy interests in the health sector; and how this has been intensified by COVID-19. The evidence is used to propose actions to advance public health interests. Public health actors and ‘one health’ actions need to build on current efforts to strengthen own discursive power, challenging narratives with evidence; to strengthen their agential power through institutionalising health impact assessment, regulation and control measures; and to deepen initiatives to engage with structural power through support for local producers, harmonised regional standards and engagement on global rules that constrain health promoting activity, as was done in the Trade Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Waiver. Subregional and continental level organisations play a key role in enabling such actions, as does investment in SSA leadership in locally relevant innovation and production, and in links between state, academic and civil society actors to support evidence and to ensure public interests, transparency and accountability in policy decisions on CDOH.
In June 2022, the World Trade Organization adopted a decision at its 12th Ministerial Conference, as the outcome of a 20-month long discussion on the TRIPS Waiver. Ultimately what resulted was a rather narrow legal mechanism, essentially clarifying existing rules in the WTO TRIPS Agreement. In this interview, Susan K Sell from the Australian National University explains why words matter and how the Waiver discussions, though disappointing, have broadened and shifted the conversation on intellectual property and public health forever. .
More than a 1,000 Kenyan tea pickers who say that harsh and exploitative working conditions on a Scottish-run tea farm have caused them crippling health complaints can now pursue their class action in an Edinburgh court. Prolonged bending to gather tea for James Finlay Kenya is argued to accelerate ageing of pickers’ backs by up to 20 years. Lawyers acting for the tea pickers have won an order from the court of session, Scotland’s highest civil court, telling James Finlay Kenya Ltd (JFK) to abandon attempts to block the suit through the Kenyan courts. Finlays, an Aberdeen-registered multinational whose estates in Kericho, Kenya, stretch across 10,117 hectares (25,000 acres), is one of the largest suppliers of tea and coffee in the world. The company has defended its health and safety record, and carries the Fairtrade mark on its products, as well as certifications from the Soil Association and the Rainforest Alliance. But in previous testimony, the article reports that workers claimed that oppressive working conditions caused them significant and permanent musculoskeletal damage. They said they had to work up to 12 hours a day in a six-day week, carry up to 26lb of the tea leaf pickings on their back over rough slopes, and in some cases meet a weight target of 66lb of tea a day or not get paid. The article reports that the lawyers hope that the case will impact more broadly on practices in the industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new global awareness of the accessibility of diagnostics and the need to test to protect with equal access for all. This episode of Global Health Matters, answers key questions including the availability of essential diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Host Garry Aslanyan interviews guests who have a deep understanding of diagnostics and their application worldwide: Bill Rodriguez is CEO of FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, and is also founder of his own diagnostics company, Daktari Diagnostics; and Sikhulile Moyo who led the team that helped discover the Omicron variant in Botswana through careful cross-examination of COVID-19 tests. Join Global Health Matters in this podcast episode to understand the state of diagnostic testing in LMICs and how to achieve equity in access to testing in all countries.