World Health Assembly Recap and How the UK’s New Tobacco Ban Could Flop

Editors' Note

On Wednesday, Ugandan authorities closed that country's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in response to the outbreak of Bundibugyo virus. Unlike the Zaire species of Ebola, responsible for the 2014–16 emergency, Bundibugyo has no approved medicines or treatments. By the time international officials announced the problem on May 15, DRC had accumulated 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths, raising suspicions that the virus circulated undetected for weeks, if not months. Since then, those tallies have tripled.

Although special pathogen outbreaks such as Ebola or hantavirus are rare, frontline readiness cannot be an afterthought. Virtual reality (VR) training is one way to make preparations feel more realistic, write NYC Health + Hospitals' Syra Madad and David Silvestri. The pair explain how New York City is using VR and other simulations to ensure physicians retain their training on how to respond to high-consequence infectious diseases.

Last week's World Health Assembly (WHA) met in the aftermath of historic declines in official development assistance for health and heightened vaccine hesitancy that have forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to recalibrate its mandates. To recap how countries approached reform at the WHA, Priti Patnaik, founder of Geneva Health Files, describes how WHO member states want the organization to approach its core mandates and the pending election of its next director general. Patnaik's article is the latest in a TGH series exploring the seventy-ninth World Health Assembly's agenda.

To wrap up, journalist Gabriela Galvin describes how the United Kingdom's generational tobacco ban, which prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in 2009 or later, could mark the beginning of the end of smoking—if it can be enforced.

Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor