Pretrial Detention, HPV, and COVID Deaths in Rural China
February 3, 2023
Editors' Note
Pretrial detention conditions at many jails, including the now infamous Rikers Island prison complex in New York, are being called out for human rights violations. Our first piece reports on the harms associated with pretrial detention—where people are detained as they await trial—and calls for minimizing incarceration while strengthening support systems within communities.
Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women globally, yet most cases are entirely preventable. Authors from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation share new estimates of the cost-effectiveness of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and explain how a new one-dose strategy could make the shots more accessible in middle-income countries that are currently ineligible for aid subsidies.
During this year's Spring Festival, a five-week period that coincides with Lunar New Year, Chinese nationals took an estimated two billion trips to visit family and friends, including those living in the countryside. Amid a nationwide surge in SARS-CoV-2 infections, many experts predicted disaster, but social media reports suggest China's zero-COVID wave has peaked earlier than expected. The proliferation of funeral tents and reports of overbooked Taoist priests in one rural county in China, however, suggest news from this holiday season will not be all good, according to the reporting of our colleague Chen Chen.
For World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day this week, our final authors argue that if the drug supply chain for NTDs was fully digitized "down to the last mile," more lives would be saved.
As always, thank you for reading.—Thomas J. Bollyky and Mary Brophy Marcus, Editors
Air travel in China during the Spring Festival season has seen a 94 percent increase so far compared to 2022, when the country was still under zero-COVID restrictions
