The case for helping Africa fight mpox

Presented by UnitedHealth Group: The ideas and innovators shaping health care

Sep 24, 2024 View in browser   By Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne, Ruth Reader and Erin Schumaker Presented by  WORLD VIEW Dr. Jean Kaseya, the director-general of Africa CDC, is urging the world to help contain an mpox outbreak. | Africa CDC One of Africa’s top public health officials has a message for the world’s leaders: Help stop the mpox outbreak in Africa. “Not controlling this outbreak in Africa can lead to a pandemic and deaths because we can see mutation again of the virus,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, the director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Carmen. A new variant of the virus, known as clade 1b, which transmits easily and can be more deadly, drove the Africa CDC to declare the mpox outbreak a public health emergency in August, a day before the World Health Organization sounded a global alarm about it. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighboring countries have reported more than 29,000 suspected cases of the rash-causing disease since the beginning of the year and more than 800 deaths. President Joe Biden pledged Tuesday to donate one million vaccine doses and $500 million to fight the outbreak, a significant ramp-up of the U.S. response. Kaseya talked with Carmen about how the U.S. can help curb the outbreak, what he expects from the rest of the world and how stigma about the disease makes responding to it harder. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do you make of Biden’s pledge? We thank the U.S. for the support. We are looking forward to discussing with the U.S. authorities the ways we can work together. We need around 10 million doses to stop this outbreak. While 1 million is a major step, we still have a huge gap, and we believe also the U.S. can be a major partner for local manufacturing of this vaccine in Africa. In preparation for the mpox vaccination campaign in the DRC, what are you doing to convince people to get the shot? I told everyone, when the DRC starts the vaccination campaign, I will go get vaccinated myself. We need to stop stigma because, as you know, in 2022, even some journalists were calling mpox a gay issue. In many countries in Africa, being gay can lead to being jailed. When someone knows that I have symptoms, they will not disclose that because the way they will be judged maybe can destroy them more than what the disease is doing. With clade 1b, people started mostly to talk about the transmission among sex workers. Now, the stigma around that was: If you have mpox, either you are gay or you are a sex worker. We even saw husbands kicking out their wives because they got mpox. Now, we are communicating appropriately. I say to people: “Anyone can get it. Anyone.”   A message from UnitedHealth Group: Learn how UnitedHealth Group is using artificial intelligence to make health care work smarter, for everyone. Learn More.   WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE Versailles, France | Jeffrey Diaz This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. AI is Aladdin's lamp: The genie comes out of it if you use it correctly, Dr. Deepak Chopra, a celebrity wellbeing guru, told CBS News. Chopra sees AI as the only way to solve the country’s mental health problems and has even developed his own AI twin, Digital Deepak, which uses information from his books and teachings to assist people with their health. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.    A message from UnitedHealth Group:   PROBLEM SOLVERS Lead poisoning continues to harm children. | AFP via Getty Images The U.S. Agency for International Development is taking on a killer estimated to claim 1.5 million lives every year, more than HIV and malaria combined: lead. USAID and UNICEF, a United Nations agency providing aid to children globally, announced in New York City Monday a $150 million partnership to end childhood lead poisoning in developing nations by 2040. The two organizations, together with charities such as Open Philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and governments across the world, will run national blood surveys and test consumer goods to determine sources of lead poisoning, USAID Administrator Samantha Power wrote in the Washington Post Monday. They’ll also support governments in introducing laws banning lead in paint. Most of the 81 countries where USAID sponsors development work lack such rules, Power wrote. The partnership will also help the industries affected by the new rules to transition to lead-free alternatives, she wrote. “Never in my career have I seen such a compelling, low-cost opportunity to make such a massive impact on a major global killer,” Power said in announcing the initiative. Why it matters: Exposure to lead hinders children’s neurological development, causing irreversible cognitive deficits and attention and behavioral changes. When pregnant women are exposed to high levels of lead, they can miscarry, give birth prematurely to children with low birth weight, or have stillbirths. While lead exposure has decreased dramatically in wealthy countries since the 1970s because of the phaseout of leaded gasoline, it’s still highly lethal in the developing world: about half of the children living in developing countries have elevated levels of lead in their blood, according to USAID and UNICEF.   A message from UnitedHealth Group: UnitedHealth Group has been deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications at-scale for years. Now, improvements in data and processing power are enabling more impactful uses of AI/ML, ushering in new possibilities for patients, providers, and the overall health care system. Learn More.   THE LAB AI promises to reveal more secrets in the data. | AP Artificial intelligence is unlocking the potential of health care data to enable researchers to gain deeper insights into the impacts of treatments. How so? Dandelion Health, a firm that’s developed AI for that purpose, recently reported that its review of data suggests newly popular weight-loss drugs — so-called GLP-1s — might reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by 15-20 percent over three years. Dandelion researchers used an algorithm — validated with patients outside the study’s pool — to predict the risk of major adverse cardiac events. Then the algorithm, which relied on electrocardiogram data, predicted patients’ risk of heart attack and stroke over time — both those on and off GLP-1s. Using this approach, researchers could study a larger population of patients than those eligible for a typical clinical trial. And by measuring predicted risk instead of actual adverse cardiac events, the researchers believe they showed that more people might benefit from the weight-loss drugs than previously known. Instead of focusing on helping populations who have already had a negative outcome, Dandelion’s team says, AI-focused research could reveal clinical approaches that reduce risks. Why it matters: Though not peer-reviewed, the findings suggest that 44 million more patients than previously thought could benefit from GLP-1s. But perhaps more exciting than the finding itself is how it was produced, Dandelion co-founder and CEO Elliott Green told Daniel. “What we did was just the very, very tip of the very, very large iceberg,” he said. If replicated, the findings could show the potential of AI-driven research to, in some cases, replace lengthy and costly clinical trials.   Follow us on Twitter Carmen Paun @carmenpaun Daniel Payne @_daniel_payne Ruth Reader @RuthReader Erin Schumaker @erinlschumaker   Follow us

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