Polio, mpox and hepatitis A are among the infectious diseases featuring in this week’s column, together with a warning that “H5N1 now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity”.
As the Olympics set new records in the marketing of unhealthy products, we link readers into some fascinating history about the tobacco industry’s long history with the Games.
We join with many others in celebrating the National Day of Recognition for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Health Workers and Health Practitioners, and mark some important news from the recent Garma Festival.
The quotable?
How nice of the Trump camp to help publicise Governor Tim Walz’s compassionate and commonsense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools! Let’s do this everywhere.”
Planetary health matters
In a new position statement on planetary health, the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia & New Zealand) calls for:
- Schools of nursing and midwifery to integrate planetary health into undergraduate and postgraduate curricula to ensure current and future nurses and midwives are well prepared to practice in the Anthropocene era.
- Educatonal and healthcare organisations to integrate Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and/or Māori ways of knowing, doing, and being to enrich understandings of planetary health and strengthen efforts towards caring for the planet.
- Governments and healthcare organisations to implement evidence-based policies, including measures to promote sustainable healthcare practices, reduce carbon emissions, mitigate environmental degradation, and prepare society to respond to the impacts of climate change.
- Governments and healthcare organisations to commit ongoing funds for nurse and midwifery led planetary health research.
Mpox alarm
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee to assess the threat from a complex mpox situation in Africa that has seen the spread of a novel clade beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and outbreaks in multiple countries involving two earlier clades, reports CIDRAP.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing that he made the decision based on spread of a novel mpox clade outside the DRC and the potential for spread to other African nations and the rest of the world.
He said the outside expert group will meet as soon as possible. Emergency committees typically make recommendations and assess whether the situation warrants a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
Science: Deadlier strain of mpox spreads to multiple African countries
Infectious diseases in Gaza
On top of the horrors of starvation, trauma and violence, the children of Gaza face an increasing threat from infectious diseases, with authorities sounding the alarm about hepatitis A outbreaks and the risks of polio.
UN News reports that in July, Israel facilitated just 67 out of 157 aid missions planned to northern Gaza. The others “were either denied, impeded or canceled due to security, logistical or operational reasons,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Racism runs riot in the United Kingdom
Health workers are among those who have been affected by the upsurge of racism and violence in the United Kingdom amid riots fuelled by disinformation and right-wing networks. Health services have also been affected.
Health workers and organisations have also been involved in the mobilisation of civil society in massive protests against the racism and anti-refugee, anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Global health
The Lancet: A manifesto on improving cancer care in conflict-impacted populations
Animal apocalypse: Deadly bird flu infects hundreds of species pole-to-pole
Chris Walzer, executive director of health at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society, warns, “H5N1 now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity.”
Health politics in the United States
As we’ve previously reported (see here and here), the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is bringing health issues to the fore.
Detailed comparison compiled by KFF: Compare the Candidates on Health Care Policy
Sugar records and the Olympics
The consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) among children and adolescents aged 3-19 years in 185 countries increased by 23 percent from 1990 to 2018, parallel to the rise in prevalence of obesity among this population globally, according to a new study.
This research should help to inform policies to reduce SSB intake among young people, the researchers reported in the BMJ.
Perhaps someone could share the findings with the powerbrokers at the Olympics, aka one of the more influential marketing arms of Coca-Cola.
BMJ: Let’s end corporate sponsorship of sporting events
Some fascinating history from the Cancer History Project: “Within just a few years of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, souvenir cards in cigarette packs were featuring Olympic athletes. Collecting and trading cigarette cards became a popular hobby among boys. By the 1910s, Olympic athletes were paid for endorsing brands of tobacco. In 1928, when women had won their equal smoking rights, Helen Wainwright, silver medal winner in both swimming and diving at the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics, would appear in an advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes, claiming that Luckies had never affected her “wind or throat.” In the 1930s, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company fielded a veritable team of men and women Olympic track and field stars, swimmers, divers, skaters, and skiers to promote Camel cigarettes on radio and in magazines and the Sunday funnies. Other Olympians endorsed Camels well into the 1950s.
“In January 1964, less than a month after Surgeon General Luther Terry released the government’s landmark report indicting cigarette smoking as the leading cause of lung cancer, the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company’s Kent and Newport cigarettes sponsored the television broadcasts of the Winter Olympic Games. In September they would also sponsor telecasts of the Summer Olympic Games. In 1980, the U.S. Winter Olympics Team training facility in Lake Placid, New York, was sponsored by the United States Tobacco Company, maker of SKOAL and Copenhagen spitting tobacco; this sponsorship continued through the 1984 Winter Olympics. But in 1987, a campaign to ban smoking and tobacco advertising at the Olympic games, led by physician John Read, father of Canadian Olympic skier Ken Read, led to the Calgary Winter Olympic Games becoming the first smoke-free Olympics. Since then, every Summer and Winter Olympic Games has adopted a smoke-free policy – and a completely tobacco-free policy since 2010.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health news
Dr Shannon Springer writes that a specialist curriculum needs to draw on the strengths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and create opportunities to identify and dismantle institutional racism. He says there is a need for a First Nations Specialist Training facility, led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts, to assist colleges in this work.
A curriculum should foster learning opportunities designed to:
- develop doctors’ skills to recognise and practise a strength-based approach, valuing culture as a protective factor and determinant of health
- use Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing in co-designing programs and research that works “with” communities rather than “on” communities
- create learning and teaching opportunities through college and health service partnerships that disrupt systems supporting health inequity and institutional racism.
Amongst other benefits, this approach “will prevent the duplication of curriculum design and implementation efforts that significantly draw on a small number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors who are becoming burnt out and moreover, this will prevent community engagement fatigue”, he writes.
Statement by National Association of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers and Practitioners
The National Day of Recognition for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Health Workers and Health Practitioners, observed annually on Wednesday 7 August 2024, provides an important opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the invaluable contribution Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Health Workers and Health Practitioners make to the health care system.
This year, the theme for the National Day of Recognition is ‘More Men for our Mob.’ Data shows that the percentage of men represented in the Workforce continues to be disproportionate to the percentage of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander men who require culturally safe primary healthcare across the nation.
“We know that having more men in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Health Worker and Health Practitioner roles will encourage our men to engage with the healthcare system and prioritise their health,” said Kuku Yalanji man and Chief Executive Officer of NAATSIHWP Karl Briscoe.
#AusPol
Department of Health and Aged Care: Supply and Demand Study General Practitioners in Australia
Public health
Advice to government: The impact of indoor air quality on the transmission of airborne viral diseases in public buildings – NSTC advice to government
Health reform
Implementation Science: Successful and sustained implementation of a behaviour-change informed strategy for emergency nurses: a multicentre implementation evaluation
MJA Insight: It’s time we recognised chronic urinary tract infection
Many specialists — gynaecologists, urologists, infectious disease physicians, and GPs — remain unfamiliar with the diagnosis of chronic urinary tract infections and the failings inherent in our current interpretation of investigations, the authors write.
“The time has come to recognise a condition that has been a source of misery for many women and girls. Clinical awareness followed by treatment aimed at eliminating chronic bladder wall colonisation of pathogens may lead to complete recovery. Ultimately this will benefit antibiotic stewardship and reduce antibiotic resistance; lifting an enormous burden for thousands of women.”
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