States of Resistance: nosocomial and environmental approaches to antimicrobial resistance in Lebanon.

Drawing on institutional historical records, interviews and student theses, this article charts the intersection of hospital acquired illness, the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), environments of armed conflict, and larger questions of social governance in the specific case of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Lebanon. Taking a methodological cue from approaches in contemporary scientific work that understand non-clinical settings as a fundamental aspect of the history and development of AMR, we treat the hospital as not just nested in a set of social and environmental contexts, but frequently housing within itself elements of social and environmental history. AMR in Lebanon differs in important ways from the settings in which global protocols for infection control or rubrics for risk factor identification for resistant nosocomial outbreaks were originally generated. While such differences are all too often depicted as failures of low and middle-income countries (LMIC) to maintain universal standards, the historical question before us is quite the reverse: how have the putatively universal rubrics of AMR and hospital infection control failed to take account of social and environmental conditions that clearly matter deeply in the evolution and spread of resistance? Focusing on conditions of war as an organized chaos in which social, environmental and clinical factors shift dramatically, on the social and political topography of patient transfer, and on a missing "meso" level of AMR surveillance between the local and global settings, we show how a multisectoral One Health approach to AMR could be enriched by an answering multisectoral methodology in history, particularly one that unsettles a canonical focus on the story of AMR in the Euro-American context.

Amal Saif Al-Maani: tackling drug-resistant pathogens.

Amal Saif Al-Maani talks to Andréia Azevedo Soares about antimicrobial resistance and the need for multisectoral approaches to mitigating its development.

[125 Years German Central Committee for the Fight against Tuberculosis (DZK)]. / 125 Jahre Deutsches Zentralkomitee zur Bekämpfung der Tuberkulose e. V. (DZK).

The German Central Committee for the Fight against Tuberculosis (DZK) celebrates this year its 125th birthday. On this occasion, the DZK as one of the oldest TB organizations worldwide is looking back on the development during its history and records the results in a comprehensive book, summarized in this article. In the book, the various political changes with their impact on the DZK are mirrored, starting with the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the so-called "Third Reich", the two German states separated after the Second World War and the current FRG. Tuberculosis (TB) was the dominant widespread disease in the 19th century, today it is the leading infectious disease worldwide. As a consequence of migration, this affects also Germany. After meanwhile - in particular in 2015/16 - risen numbers of new cases (especially of those not born in Germany, which in 2019 accounted for 72 % of all cases), the impact of drug-resistant tuberculosis (in 2019, 11.4 % of all new cases had some resistance (384 cases), including 87 cases of MDR-TB, and of these 8 cases of XDR-TB and 27 cases of pre-XDR-TB), as well as the high proportion (81,5 %) - in 2019 - of open and thus very infectious pulmonary TB among new TB cases in Germany, impressively show that TB continues to be a health problem that should not be underestimated and that is increasingly concentrated in risk groups (socially disadvantaged persons, people from high-prevalence countries, homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics, HIV-infected persons). The DZK therefore continues to play an important role in TB control as a link between the national and international organizations responsible for combating TB.

[To what extent Africa can limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic?] / Jusqu'où l'Afrique peut-elle limiter l'impact de la pandémie de COVID-19 ?

Following the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the alerts issued by the World Health Organization, for several months attention has been focused on Africa as a potentially severely endangered continent. A sizable number of African countries, mainly low and middle income, suffer from limited available resources, especially in critical care, and COVID-19 is liable to overwhelm their already fragile health systems. To effectively manage what is shaping up as a multidimensional crisis, the challenge unquestionably goes beyond the necessary upgrading of public health infrastructures. It is also a matter of anticipating and taking timely action with regard to factors that may mitigate the propagation of SARS-CoV2 and thereby cushion the shock of the pandemic on the African continent. While some of these factors are largely unmanageable (climate, geography…), several others (socio-cultural, religious, audio-visual, and potentially political…) could be more or less effectively dealt with by African governments and populations.

El Alamein: the battle in the battle. How infectious disease management changed the fate of one of the most important battle of the World War II.

El Alamein, on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, was the theater of war for one of the most important and decisive battles of the Second World War. The Allied victory in November 1942 opened the end of the Western Desert Campaign. The battle revived the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis since Operation Crusader in late 1941. The German threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields was eliminated and the doors for Mediterranean advance were opened. Fighting in the desert under extreme human conditions exposed all the involved armies to health hazards going beyond those arising from common battle injuries. The outcome of the battle was influenced by a gap in morbidity and mortality derived from different approaches in infectious disease management between armies. The attention of the British for medical research, pharmacological experimentation, hygiene strategies and prevention may have been as important as warfare strategies in deciding the fate of the battle. Examples of some of these advances include wound nursing, control of endemic diseases, surveillance of difficult hygienic conditions, prevention of faecal-oral transmission diseases. During El Alamein Battle soldiers on both fronts where engaged in two wars: the first one, vertical, was against the enemy uniform; the second one, horizontal, was against invisible enemies called pathogens. Only surviving the horizontal war meant preserve enough units and morale in order to win El Alaman Battle.

COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: How Might They Be Prevented?

Pandemics such as influenza, smallpox, and plague have caused the loss of hundreds of millions of lives and have occurred for many centuries. Fortunately, they have been largely eliminated by the use of vaccinations and drugs. More recently, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and now Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) have arisen, and given the current absence of highly effective approved vaccines or drugs, brute-force approaches involving physical barriers are being used to counter virus spread. A major basis for physical protection from respiratory infections is eye, nose, and mouth protection. However, eye protection with goggles is problematic due to "fogging", while nose/mouth protection is complicated by the breathing difficulties associated with non-valved respirators. Here, we give a brief review of the origins and development of face masks and eye protection to counter respiratory infections on the basis of experiments conducted 100 years ago, work that was presaged by the first use of personal protective equipment, "PPE", by the plague doctors of the 17th Century. The results of the review lead to two conclusions: first, that eye protection using filtered eye masks be used to prevent ocular transmission; second, that new, pre-filtered, valved respirators be used to even more effectively block viral transmission.

The past, present and future impact of HIV prevention and control on HPV and cervical disease in Tanzania: A modelling study.

BACKGROUND: Women with HIV have an elevated risk of HPV infection, and eventually, cervical cancer. Tanzania has a high burden of both HIV and cervical cancer, with an HIV prevalence of 5.5% in women in 2018, and a cervical cancer incidence rate among the highest globally, at 59.1 per 100,000 per year, and an estimated 9,772 cervical cancers diagnosed in 2018. We aimed to quantify the impact that interventions intended to control HIV have had and will have on cervical cancer in Tanzania over a period from 1995 to 2070. METHODS: A deterministic transmission-dynamic compartment model of HIV and HPV infection and natural history was used to simulate the impact of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), anti-retroviral therapy (ART), and targeted pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) on cervical cancer incidence and mortality from 1995-2070. FINDINGS: We estimate that VMMC has prevented 2,843 cervical cancer cases and 1,039 cervical cancer deaths from 1995-2020; by 2070 we predict that VMMC will have lowered cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates by 28% (55.11 cases per 100,000 women in 2070 without VMMC, compared to 39.93 with VMMC only) and 26% (37.31 deaths per 100,000 women in 2070 without VMMC compared to 27.72 with VMMC), respectively. We predict that ART will temporarily increase cervical cancer diagnoses and deaths, due to the removal of HIV death as a competing risk, but will ultimately further lower cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates by 7% (to 37.31 cases per 100,000 women in 2070) and 5% (to 26.44 deaths per 100,000 women in 2070), respectively, relative to a scenario with VMMC but no ART. A combination of ART and targeted PrEP use is anticipated to lower cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates to 35.82 and 25.35 cases and deaths, respectively, per 100,000 women in 2070. CONCLUSIONS: HIV treatment and control measures in Tanzania will result in long-term reductions in cervical cancer incidence and mortality. Although, in the near term, the life-extending capability of ART will result in a temporary increase in cervical cancer rates, continued efforts towards HIV prevention will reduce cervical cancer incidence and mortality over the longer term. These findings are critical background to understanding the longer-term impact of achieving cervical cancer elimination targets in Tanzania.