From Airfinity’s curated analysis of various health and media sources and from the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) Weekly Communicable Disease Threats Report:
- All indicators point to elevated but decreasing influenza activity in Europe. SARS-CoV-2 activity has remained low in Europe as well.
- The COVID-19 burden is in decline in the US and Japan.
- RSV activity has continued to decrease to low levels in most reporting countries worldwide.
- A total of four cases of avian influenza A(H9N2) have been reported in children in mainland China in February-March. H9N2 infections are usually related to contact with poultry or their environments. They are typically mild and affect children.
- Avian influenza A(H5N1) has been detected for the first time in US mammalian livestock – in goats in a Minnesota farm. Cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have been detected in dairy cows in farms in Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico. At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply.
- Measles continues to surge in parts of Europe, with the highest number of cases in the UK, Romania, and Austria. A surge of measles is also ongoing in North America, with a vaccine shortage in Canada due to increased demand. Elsewhere, DRC and Kyrgyzstan, among other countries in Africa and Asia, are also facing significant outbreaks. Cases of measles have been reported so far this year in a total of 83 countries globally.
- Over half a million cases of malaria have been reported recently in Madagascar. Risk is expected to remain very high into April.
- So far this year, approximately 70.000 cases of chikungunya have been reported worldwide, in a total of 16 countries, namely in the Americas (11), Asia (4), and Africa (1).
- Since the beginning of 2024 over two million dengue cases and over 500 dengue-related deaths have been reported globally – see the ECDC Three-month dengue virus disease case notification rate per 100.000 population (Dec 2023-Feb 2024) map below:
In South America, Uruguay is experiencing an unprecedented surge in dengue. With over 2 million probable cases so far this year, Brazil has been trying to actively fight the spread of this mosquito-borne disease with educational and environmental measures, and by being the first country ever to offer the vaccine through its public health system – it will be very interesting to follow the long-term outcomes of this first in the world immunisation drive.
- In 2024 so far ten cases of acute flaccid paralysis due to polio have been reported: in Nigeria (4), Pakistan (2), Guinea (1), Mali (1), Somalia (1), and Yemen (1).
- A cross-border event of hepatitis A (genotype IA) with 46 cases reported in Portugal and the Netherlands has been ongoing since December, mainly among MSM. The ECDC considers that there is a risk of re-emergence of hepatitis A Europe-wide.
- Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global disease, with a significant burden on health. The following map from The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows how the incidence of TB has evolved around the world in recent years:
Other selected articles/publications:
- AI systems are able to digest huge amounts of data and suggest logical answers to questions in a fraction of the time it would take a human. However, AI systems are designed by humans and, like them, are susceptible to bias. The amount of data is not only immense, it is also ever-growing. So is the potential for bias. Bradley D Menz et al evaluated the effectiveness of safeguards to prevent large language models (LLMs) from being misused to generate health disinformation.
Four LLMs (via chatbots/assistant interfaces) were prompted to generate health disinformation on two topics: sunscreen as a cause of skin cancer and the alkaline diet as a cancer cure. Three of them (via ChatGPT, Bard, and HuggingChat) consistently generated health disinformation blogs. The blogs targeted diverse demographic groups and incorporated attention-grabbing titles, authentic looking (fake or fictional) references and fabricated testimonials from patients and clinicians.
Although effective safeguards are feasible to prevent misuse, they were inconsistently implemented. Enhanced regulation, transparency, routine auditing, and more research are required to help prevent AI from contributing to the mass generation of health disinformation.
Articles in full here: https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-078538 https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cpt.3117?campaign=woletoc
Events:
- Challenges of Airline Medicine at the International Airline Medicine Association (IAMA) Scientific Meeting, May 4th, in Chicago https://iama-assn.org/
As usual the IAMA meeting will be on the Saturday before the start of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) Annual Scientific Meeting (5-9 May). https://www.asma.org/scientific-meetings/asma-annual-scientific-meeting/asma-94th-annual-scientific-meeting-chicago,-il
- Abstract submission deadline is April 30th for ICAM 2024, the 2nd International Congress of Aerospace Medicine, in Lisbon, Portugal, 3-5 October: www.icam2024.com
- While in Lisbon you will want to stay on for the IATA and IAMA promoted Aviation Health Conference, 7-8 October for in-depth talks and discussions on matters of specific interest for airline related work:
https://quaynote.com/conference/aviation-health-conference-24/
Dr Rui Pombal
IATA Medical Advisor