Climate Resilience, Drug Shortages, and Disinformation

Editor's Note

As Californians fight to contain several wildfires that broke out last week, investigators are working to determine the cause of the blazes. Though the catalyst is yet to be confirmed, experts agree that climate change is responsible for the dry conditions that allowed the fires to spread quickly and destroy thousands of acres.

Kicking off this week, former World Health Organization (WHO) Climate Change and Health Advisor Arthur Wyns points out that 2024 was both the hottest year on record and one that saw political shifts away from climate-friendly policies. To help build bipartisan support for climate action, Wyns suggests centering plans for climate resilience around health.

In other health policy news, CFR's Bloomberg Chair in Global Health Thomas J. Bollyky, Research Associate Chloe Searchinger, and Staff Editor Allison Krugman adapt a recent study led by CFR and Harvard University on how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can more readily address drug shortages. The paper recommends authorizing temporary importation of critical medicines from other well-regulated markets to prevent or more quickly resolve shortages and bolster U.S. supply-chain resilience.

Moving to Democratic Republic of Congo, Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Jean Kaseya and coauthors Mosoka P. Fallah, Faraan O. Rahim, Dieudonné Mwamba, and Placide Mbala discuss lessons learned from the country's recent Disease X outbreak. They argue that the delay in identifying the illness—severe malaria complicated by malnutrition—highlights the need to reduce time between sample collection and diagnosis and strengthen disease preparedness.

To wrap up the issue, journalist Andersson Boscan goes inside Latin America's troll farms to uncover the drivers of health disinformation, how falsehoods spread, and what internet users can do to fight fake information—particularly as social media companies reverse their fact-checking policies.

Until next week! —Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor