Category: Health Equity

31,285 Human Rights Violations and Counting: Hypocrisy in America’s Liberal Bastion

by hanstewart, posted in Health Equity, Human Rights

On February 8, 2019, city councilors in Los Angeles met to approve a resolution declaring LA a “city of sanctuary.” It was hailed as a victory amid growing political tension and derision, a “symbolic welcome sign,” according to Councilman Gil Cedillo, that was supposed to “set the tone for the way we want our residents to be treated.” However, for the 31,285 Angelenos who are experiencing homelessness, Los Angeles is anything but a sanctuary.

You know you’ve stumbled into LA’s Skid Row the moment you arrive. Trash clings to the streets in heaps, stacked haphazardly against rows of tents so densely packed it’s difficult to find the sidewalk. It’s a stark contrast to the dazzling city skyline that frames the neighborhood. This isn’t a part of Los Angeles you can see from the sterile aerial shots that punctuate film and television, but it’s the reality of a county with over 10,000,000 residents and wage growth that can’t keep up with the rising cost of living.

Everyone in Los Angeles, from City Hall to residential streets, agrees that more must be done. Inevitably, however, most attempts to build temporary or permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles is met with public resistance. NIMBY, the acronym for “Not in My Back Yard,” refers to the opposition of development in one’s own neighborhood, even if they would otherwise support such a project somewhere else. NIMBYism is rampant in LA’s complex and powerful network of neighborhood associations and councils. When city officials met with residents of Sherman Oaks, a wealthy neighborhood on the west side of the city, to show proposals for homeless housing projects, residents turned out in force to oppose the plans. One resident went so far as to propose his own solution to the need for emergency shelters in Los Angeles:

“You want me to have compassion for people who don’t care about themselves?…I’m proposing maybe you build a reservation for these homeless somewhere out in the desert…when we interned the Japanese during the Second World War, we didn’t intern them in the city”.    

Much of this resentment and stigmatization comes from the deeply held American belief in the “prosperity gospel.” In other words, those who work hard and are free from vices are protected against material scarcity. Homelessness, then, is a personal failing and not a societal one. It’s time we reframe homelessness.

Public officials, public health professionals, and advocates across Los Angeles need to change the way we talk about homelessness to end the rampant NIMBYism in the city. It’s time to adopt a rights-based approach that focuses on the systemic failures that are determinants of homelessness. We need to abandon the “treatment first” approach to combating homelessness, where we attempt to fix the precipitating effects of inadequate housing (substance abuse, mental illness, poor health) before providing stable housing. Instead, programmatic and policy efforts should focus on “housing first” approaches that satisfy basic human needs before attempting to solve complex behavioral and lifestyle issues. The model is evidence-based and, unlike many interventions designed to combat homelessness, it’s effective. Investments in housing first approaches reduced homelessness by 91% in Utah, and research efforts in Seattle show that the savings generated by reducing the need for crisis intervention services more than makes up for the cost of housing first projects.  

Image Credit: The Spotlight

Los Angeles has the opportunity to lead by example in a world that is growing increasingly less empathetic to the plight of the vulnerable. However, we cannot be the city that birthed the “Me Too” movement and turn away from the fact that half of all women who are homeless report that they are domestic violence survivors. We cannot say that we are a city that believes that black lives matter when we know that while only 8% of LA County identifies as black or African American, they make up over one-third of the unsheltered population. It is unconscionable that our city turns out in force for Pride but fights efforts to house homeless youth, nearly half of whom cite whom they love as the reason they are homeless.

In December, Los Angeles hosted the UN’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that states in no uncertain terms that housing is a right of every person everywhere. If we are to be taken seriously in our defiance of increasingly discriminatory national rhetoric, we must do better here at home.

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.“
-UDHR, Article 25.1

Read more about evidence based messaging campaigns around homelessness.

The Forgotten Health Inequality: Languages and Medical Information

by pragmaticsolidarity, posted in APHA IH Section, Health Equity, Health Systems, Technology

Health inequalities and disparities have plagued this fragile earth since the beginning of unprecedented medical advances, the wealth divide, and the transition from agricultural economies to industrialized states. These health inequalities can range from lack of access to diagnosing technology, unaffordable medications that treat ubiquitous ailments, and distribution barriers that cause a shortage of preventive tools and drugs. Each one of these entities cause an immense amount of suffering for both health care providers, who are required to overcome the barriers, and, for those who are directly afflicted – patients and their families. In addition to these aforementioned health inequalities, the distribution of medical information is directly affected by another concealed yet detrimental form of disparity: the lack of diversity within the languages it is presented in.

Those who inherently speak English won’t face the same barriers as a rural Brazilian physician being unable to fully comprehend English specific instructions for a novel diagnosing tool for the Zika Virus. Nor will those inhabiting anglophone countries endure the same struggle of a Burmese pharmacist who isn’t able to utilize the pharmacokinetic data from a recently approved medication for colon cancer. The fact that information in English related to lifestyle changes for coronary heart disease might not be clear to some community health workers may not be realized from those hailing from the developed world where English is commonly spoken. Treatment guidelines, publications in prominent internationally renowned journals, medication inserts, and countless other resources are typically exclusively published in the English language – creating an insurmountable barrier for those having little access to an English medical education. While having a universal language like English as a connecting tool for the international health community has several benefits, this encompasses a little more than a billion fluent/semi-fluent English-speaking individuals on this earth: leaving about 6 billion humans with little or without access to this rich collection of health information. This language barrier for the majority of humanity amplifies the problems with the quality of care a health care provider is able to administer when also considering other health disparities like lack of access to technology and medications.

This disparity infects and disrupts many facets of the global health communities desire to truly empower local health care professionals and create sustainable public health care institutions. Although the leading global health entity, the World Health Organization (WHO), has attempted to tackle this disparity and expand its impact through diversifying its official languages, it still leaves half of the world population without access in their native tongue. The official languages of the WHO include Arabic (242 million native speakers), Chinese (1197 million), English (335 million), French (76 million), Russian (16 million), and Spanish (399 million) which totals to be only approximately 2.4 billion people. Furthermore, even with these six official languages, only WHO official documents are translated into the six languages while technical reports, guidelines and even the majority of the website is strictly in the English language. Besides WHO and as previously mentioned, the venues novel information is presented in like journals/guidelines is inaccessible to the great majority of health care professionals attempting to provide evidence-based care for their patients. A study published in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International in 2008 revealed that the amount of English-only journals in Medline has risen to 89% with roughly 9/10 new journals with Medline are in the English language. In addition, of 103 journals that are ranked and listed based on frequency of being cited, only 13 are not written (entirely or primarily) in English. This remote information can lead to situations where proper treatment guidelines are not followed causing morbidity or mortality, a lack of awareness of a necessary change within a hospital system, and other negative events that prevents local health leaders from taking charge of their community’s health and creating maintainable interventions.

Although making this medical information accessible to a superior majority of humanity is a difficult task due to lack of awareness, cultural aspects in languages, funding, and human resources, several programs have been recently developed throughout the world to begin addressing this health inequality with the assistance of WHO and political will:

    • In 2009, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University of Health Sciences in Saudi Arabia conducted a study that revealed that just over 4% of all Arabic health information websites met international quality standards. With this data being brought forth, the WHO’s Global Arabic Program was established to disseminate the work of WHO through Arabic publications, make reliable and current health information and research outcomes available in Arabic, and establish networks and knowledge communities in Arabic translation, terminology and publishing. In addition to this WHO program, an establishment of an Arabic health information foundation was created to govern and accredit Arabic health websites and an Arabic health encyclopedia
    • In 2012, WHO established a program, called the WHO Moscow documentation centre, which was funded by the Russian government to increase the number of technical WHO publications in Russian, such as clinical guidelines, and to establish a mechanism for consulting Russian-speaking public health experts on which publications they needed most. In order to ensure proper translation and clinical effectiveness, Russian experts are also invited to review the Russian publications before being revealed. This has directly empowered local health care providers and has provided a sustainable foundation for future Russian health dissemination success.  
  • In 2005, WHO established the ePORTUGUESe program to increase access to health information in Portuguese as part of a collaboration with Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome & Principe and Timor-Leste. This has allowed each country to develop their own specific health information library to meet specific needs for their populations. This platform can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, giving health care providers a venue to improve patient care.

These are promising starts to addressing the language barriers that affect health care providers each day while caring for their patients. However, a continued devotion for assisting Khmer-speaking midwives in rural Cambodia utilizing a new birth spacing method, Creole-speaking pharmacists in Haiti checking for drug interactions between coumadin and levofloxacin, and Portuguese-speaking pediatricians in Mozambique deciding what dose of a powerful antibiotic to give needs to be followed through with to honor the global health’s community commitment to each other. While these examples serve as templates for success, an increase in awareness must be brought to the attention of heads of states and health leaders to ensure this health inequality is properly addressed. International health journals have the obligation to better structure their publications in order to make the information more language accessible; while local journals need to promote publications in the residential language to improve the provided health care in the area. The empowerment of public and private health care professionals is vital to the success of their country’s health, and overcoming the medical language barrier is the first step to achieving this.

The Future of HIV: Novel Treatment Options & A Possible Cure

by pragmaticsolidarity, posted in APHA IH Section, Health Equity, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Disease, Pharmaceuticals, Research

As the medical community and those it serves welcomed in a new year, it brought with it the hope of scientific advancements that will alter the course of certain disease states. These advancements include the use of stem cells to treat to treat macular degeneration, novel microscopic techniques to capture images of the brain, the continued observed effectiveness of the experimental Ebola vaccine, and countless other interventions aimed at creating a healthier global society. Included in these optimisms for 2019 is the possibility for novel treatment options and a possible cure for one of the world’s leading causes of death, HIV. The stories of Timothy Brown – the only individual ever to be cured of HIV, the Mississippi baby and Clark Hawley – both having an extended period of time with undetectable HIV viral load with an interruption of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), and the Boston patients/Mayo Clinic patient – all three having undetectable HIV viral loads for an extended period of time after a stem cell transplant, have brought much sanguinity to health care professionals and patients alike. However, these exciting results have been unable to be replicated in the majority of the population suffering from HIV and remain unique in their respective occurrences. Although ART has been vital to the HIV community in terms of longevity and quality life, there are still certain populations that are seeking other mechanisms to treat this infectious disease – and, of course, always coveting the idea of a cure. The following is a brief glimpse at the vast pipeline that awaits 2019 and the anticipations of the global healthcare community.  

Combination Approaches

  1. The AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) is currently exploring the option of combining vorinostat, a HDAC inhibitor along with tamoxifen, which is an FDA approved medication the treatment of breast cancer for postmenopausal women. Utilizing this approach is thought to prevent the reactivation of HIV in CD4+ cells that are latent in addition to increasing the latency-reversal effect of vorinostat through tamoxifen.
  2. Researchers from the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK are collaborating for a trial testing the combination of two HIV vaccine candidates alongside a monoclonal antibody called vedolizumab. This method of treatment is thought to target a certain protein in the body, α4β7 integrin, that plays a role in transmission of HIV into CD4+ cells. In a macaque model, this combination has shown the control of SIV (HIV but in simians) after discontinuing ART.
  3. At the University of Minnesota, researchers are testing infusions of natural killer (NK) cells with the administration of cytokine interleukin-2 (IL-2). The researchers are hoping to add to the evidence of NK cells being able to exhaust HIV reservoirs and to control virus replication.
  4. In a version of the “kick & kill” method of curing HIV, researchers in Oxford and Barcelona are using a medication to active the latent HIV reservoir while boosting the immune response 1000 times stronger than the usual to rid the body of the virus. Preliminary results showed that 5/15 patients had undetectable viral loads for seven months without ART.

Immunotherapy Approaches

  1. Immunocore, a company founded in Oxford with heavy investment by Bill Gates, has designed T cell receptors that seek out and bind with the HIV virus. These receptors then instruct immune T cells to eliminate any HIV-infected cells, even when the levels happen to be extremely low. Since levels can be rather low in the reservoir of HIV virus that exists in an infected individual, this is a promising lead to completely remove this retrovirus from the body. This immunotherapy has shown to be effective in human tissue samples, but no results being tested in humans have been released.
  2. In France, a company known as InnaVirVax has established a vaccine, VAC-3S, that allows the body to stimulate a production of antibodies against the HIV protein 3S. This, in turn, causes T cells to attack the virus. This is considered a novel approach because it encourages the immune system to recover while equipping it with the tools to continue fighting off the virus. VAC-3S has completed Phase 2a trials, and is partnered with a DNA-based vaccine from FIT Biotech, a Finnish company, that both parties believe can lead to a functional cure.  
  3. In a recently initiated trial, IMPAACT 2008, held in the USA, Botswana, Brazil, and Zimbabwe, a broadly neutralizing antibody termed VRC01 is being investigated for its effectiveness in infants with HIV who are also started on ART within 12 weeks of birth. Although the study aims at establishing the safety profile for VRC01, it is also observing the difference in the HIV reservoir compared with only ART.

Novel Antiretroviral Agents

  1. The manufacturer, ABIVAX, believes it has developed a compound that may help the immune system recognize cells infected with HIV by allowing an increased presentation of HIV antigens on the cell’s service. This would lead to an augmented immune response to abolish these infected cells. This compound has been labelled ABX464 and targets the HIV protein Rev, which is responsible for the transcription of HIV RNA. Reductions of measured HIV DNA have been reported from 25% to 50% in eight of the fifteen patients participating in the study; however, no delay in viral load rebound was found when compared with placebo.
  2. Gilead has created a novel mechanism of targeting the HIV virus through the capsid inhibitors class. Capsids are involved in protecting HIV RNA and related proteins, and capsids also breaks down to release the viral contents into CD4 cells which enable reverse transcription to take place. The novel agent by Gilead, GS-CA1, blocks both the assembly and disassembly of capsids that create non-infectious and defective viruses.

Gene Therapy

  1. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T therapy has been re-initiated in the first cure related clinical trial of this approach in people living with HIV who are on ART. CAR T cell therapy involves the modification of an individual’s T cells that can target antigens of interest. The specific cells modified by the initiative in China, called VC-CAR-T cells, have been modified to target HIV gp120. These modified cells were able to induce the destruction of HIV-infected cells, including latently infected cells exposed to latency-reversing agents, in the laboratory setting.  
  2. With the knowledge of knowing that about 1% of the world’s population is immune to HIV due to a genetic mutation on the gene that encodes for CCR5, US-based Sangamo has begun to edit DNA to introduce the aforementioned mutation. The CCR5 protein is attached to the surface of CD4 cells that allows HIV to enter and infect the cell; with the mutation, it would be impossible for HIV to enter cells. This company extracts patient’s CD4 cells in order to use zinc finger nucleases to edit patient’s DNA to make them resistant to HIV.
  3. Although a highly controversial topic amid the recent publication of the use of CRISPER in twin daughters in China, scientists believe that this tool can lead to a cure for HIV as it is believed to be a much easier, faster, and effective approach than other gene-editing methods. However, the majority of the global health community is in agreement that years of laboratory research and ethical standards need to be established before human trials are properly started.

With the HIV virus adapting and mutating to evade treatments almost as rapidly as the world is producing novel approaches to treating this infectious disease, the drive for continued research and testing should be relentless. These aforementioned examples of novel treatments and possible cures display the creative and diverse thought processes the medical community has put forth to tackle one of the most stigmatized diseases on this earth. However, the ethics behind these trials need to be sound and forthcoming for all of humanity. The trials that occur need to ensure an assortment of demographics including individuals from both developed and developing nations – a subtle form of medical colonialism has no place in the global health community. In addition, trials that enroll patients who willingly accept the benefits and risks associated with the experimental therapy have the moral obligation to supply lifetime treatment if it happens to be effective. The researchers and medical professionals who monitor these participants need to take extreme caution in ART interruptions/discontinuations and certify that the patients realize what complications could transpire due to them. Finally, and most importantly, the interventions that show promise of novel ways to approach HIV or even a cure have to be accessible, affordable, and available to all humans who suffer from HIV. The health inequalities that plague this fragile planet have already been clearly highlighted in this ailment throughout history; the global health community is in debt to humanity for a cure for all when discovered.  

With the global health community’s commitment, the future of the HIV virus continues to transition from infectious disease to chronic disease. While the step that will advance the chronic disease to a cure is still thought to be unknown, the excitement behind the aforementioned gene editing therapy is substantial. The ability to safely, effectively and ethically modify human cells to prevent the entry of the virus into the immune system is certainly the most promising option recently and possibly from this disease’s initial appearance; although, health care professionals haven’t quite figured out how to combine these aspects yet. A cure or even functional cure may be years away, but the global health community needs to continue to accompany those inflicted by this chronic infectious disease to meet the hopes and expectations of alleviating the burdens of HIV.

The Developing World & Non-Communicable Diseases: A Pandemic of Drug Shortages & Inequitable Access

by pragmaticsolidarity, posted in APHA IH Section, Chronic Disease, Health Equity, Pharmaceuticals

Throughout the developing world, health demographics are rapidly shifting from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) due to urbanization, lifestyle changes, and introduction of processed food. Although still retaining a significant portion of their communicable disease burden like tuberculosis and malaria, the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and cancer in developing countries has increased dramatically and is expected to cause every 7 out of 10 deaths by 2020. With the rise of these health ailments, the global health community has highlighted the importance and severity of these diseases through UN High-level meetings, incorporating relevant indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), and forming interagency coalitions within countries to address the barriers of NCD prevention and treatment. However, NCD medication supplies have remained an underappreciated barrier that humans affected by global health inequalities confront each day. The complications of drug supplies range from common medications being out of stock to not having a vital class of medications available at the health facility. The medication shortages that plague developing nation states often have a more pronounced effect on underserved populations – essentially causing an impossible barrier to treating their chronic condition and preventing morbidity/mortality.

Last month on November 20th, The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology revealed predictions in the year 2030 regarding the world’s insulin supply that stunned health care professionals around the globe. From data gathered recently, the number of individuals diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes is estimated at 405 million people. Although some patients can be treated with oral or injectable diabetic medications like metformin or GLP1 inhibitors, there are approximately 63 million people on earth today that require the use of insulin to manage their diabetes. However, only 30 million individuals use insulin due to availability, affordability, and inequitable access to this essential class of medications. Although these numbers provide a clear indication of the necessity for change in regards to access to insulin globally, the scientists at Stanford that conducted the aforementioned study in The Lancet predicted that the number of individuals diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes will increase to 510 million in 2030 – 79 million of those will need insulin to proper manage their health disorder with only 38 million having equitable access to insulin. These statistics exhibit that, in 13 years, less than half of the people on this planet will be able to access insulin, a medication developed 97 years ago. Though over half of the world’s diagnosed Type 2 diabetics will reside in China, India, or the United States, the study continued and stated that the insulin supply shortage will distress those inhabiting Africa and Asia most significantly. The reasons formulated to explain this health disparity include the fact that three pharmaceutical industries control almost 100% of insulin being manufactured in the world, the complexity of insulin which is a hormone produced by living cells, and generic companies’ lack of interest in producing a biosimilar at an equitable price.   

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) pose an implausible health burden on the global society with 30% of all deaths worldwide being attributed to these ailments. Of this mortality caused by CVDs, it is estimated that 80% occurs in the developing world with projections suggesting a steady increase in this percentage. However, with equitable access to cardiovascular medications, approximately 75% of recurrent CVDs can be prevented causing a decrease in both mortality and morbidity for humanity. To determine the access to common cardiovascular medications like atenolol, captopril, hydrochlorothiazide, losartan, and nifedipine, the BMC Cardiovascular Disorders journal published findings in 2010 of a survey within 36 countries. The findings revealed that the drug shortages transcended more complex medications like insulin and affected the access of medications that are considered ubiquitous in the developed world. The analyzed data revealed that of the abovementioned medications in the 36 countries, only 26.3% was available in the public sector and 57.3% in the private sector. The study also stated that in several nations, the wages earned within one working day was insufficient to meet the cost of one day of purchasing treatment. When considering situations where monotherapy is inappropriate, this finding would disclose that treatment would be particularly unaffordable.

When considering access to NCD medications generally, wealth has been a substantial determinant of inequitable access to treatment of hypertension, asthma, cancer, and others classified as NCDs. In many low-income to middle-income countries (LMICs), a wealth gradient has even been observed. In order to gather information to disprove or support this theory, the BMJ Global Health Journal published a study conducted in Kenya in August 2018. The study administered surveys to patients prescribed hypertension, diabetes, and asthma medications and collected data on those medications available at their home, including location and cost of the service. When analyzing the data, the results clearly indicated a wealth gradient for each of the three diseases included in the study in terms of access. As household income increases, so does the likelihood that a family has an opportunity to obtain proper medication. In addition, the results showed that poorer patients had to travel further to obtain treatment than those with a higher income. Finally, and most meaningfully, poorer patients paid more for their medications than their fellow humans inhabiting other parts of the country.  

These global health inequalities are unjustifiable in a global society where the quantity and quality of medications on the market is incredible. The drug shortages and inequitable access differ between the developed world and developing world, but also by socioeconomic stratifications within countries themselves. In order to provide compassionate care to every human suffering from any of these ailments, governments need to begin initiatives to make insulin, losartan, albuterol, and every vital NCD medication available to every citizen in their country. Heads of states, pharmaceutical industries, ministries of health, and health care professionals need to accompany their citizens and patients with a health mindset moving away from health as a commodity to health as a right. Most urgently, universal health care coverage needs to be at the forefront of every national health agenda to properly address this pandemic of drug shortages and inequitable access.

Antibiotic Resistance: Hidden Rates in Rural Areas of the Developing World

by pragmaticsolidarity, posted in APHA IH Section, Health Equity, Infectious Disease, Pharmaceuticals

When the age of antibiotics commenced in the 1950s, diseases and infections that typically would lead to humans being stigmatized by society, a permanent stay at a sanatorium, and then ultimately death were suddenly able to be treated quickly and efficiently. Penicillin and Streptomycin, not only improved a patient’s quality of life and longevity, but reshaped the very nature of treating infectious diseases. Health care professionals now possessed a cure to end the spread of the ailment and to eliminate the actual microorganism that created the suffering. However, these agents brought with them negative consequences that the global health community is still combating today – antibiotic resistance being one of the most significant issues. Antibiotic resistance is the predator’s (bacteria, virus, other microorganism) ability to resist an antibiotic that once was able to eliminate it. Although antibiotic resistance can occur naturally due to the cleverness of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, the misuse of antibiotics in humans has tremendously accelerated the rate and severity of resistance. This inappropriate use of medicine and skills has led to difficult to treat infections like Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing strains of Enterobacteriaceae and even untreatable infections with no known drug on the market able to help an infected patient. The concept of antibiotic resistance often differs within the medical community when comparing the developed world, particularly urban areas, and the developing world, particularly rural areas. The amount of research, minds, and technology mobilized to address this unruly behavior by microorganisms varies drastically between the two sets.

In the urban developed world where physicians are equipped with the most innovative antibiotics known to man like daptomycin or the “Crispr” agents, antibiotic resistance is frequently a topic of discussion along with funding, human resources, and technology available to address it. Also, common ideology is that antibiotic resistance arises from the direct misuse of antibiotics rather than of natural causes. Contrasting the rural developing world, the aforementioned necessities to deter antibiotic resistance are often lacking due to health inequalities that unfortunately are ubiquitous throughout this fragile planet. More interesting though, health care professionals have formed an impression that antibiotic resistance more commonly stems from the dissemination of resistant organisms. With this mindset ingrained in world health leaders, the agenda has been to focus on prevention through this venue in the rural developing world – often lacking a call of funding to determine actual causes of antibiotic resistance and their associated rates in the rural developing world. While the dissemination of strains of Escherichia coli through feces and Multi-drug resistance Tuberculosis through poor air quality certainly needs to be addressed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report in 1999 encouraging health care professions to consider a range of socioeconomic and behavioral factors including misuse of antibiotics by physicians, unskilled practitioners, the public, counterfeit medications, inadequate surveillance, and political factors. To follow up with this theoretical account, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a survey across twelve (12) low to middle income countries across the world in 2015 to interview the population about their beliefs towards antibiotics and resistance. Some of the results are presented below:

  • In lower income countries, it was reported that antibiotic use is higher (42%) than in higher income countries (29%).
  • Across the countries, the range of patients obtaining their antibiotics with a physician’s prescription ranges from 56% to 93%.
  • The percentage of individuals believing they can use the same antibiotic as a family member did to treat a similar illness is 25% while 43% believe it is acceptable to buy the same antibiotic from a local pharmacy.
  • When patient’s start to feel better, 32% of the those interviewed believe they can stop the antibiotics and not follow through with full course.
  • When treating colds and viruses, 62% of respondents believe antibiotics could be used to treat these ailments.
  • Finally, 44% of those interviewed believe antibiotic resistance is only a problem for those regularly taking antibiotics.

These specific social results from patients in the developing world directly conflict with the thought of the major distributor of antibiotic resistance being through dissemination of the disease. The beliefs presented through these percentages seem to lead to a whole host of factors being involved similar to the developed world. In addition to these social results, PLOS Biology released data in 2018 that Escherichia coli was resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics like ampicillin (92%), ceftazidime (90%), cefoxitin (88%), streptomycin (40%) and tetracycline (36%) in the rural areas of Sikkim, India in pre-school and school-going children. The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society reported similar rates among children in 2015 with Klebsiella pneumoniae having a median resistance to ampicillin with a rate of 94% in Asia and 100% in Africa, and cephalosporins having a rate of 84% in Asia and 50% in Africa. Also, The World Health Organization informed the global community that in Malawi in 2018, nearly 100% of Neisseria gonorrheae genital isolates were non-susceptible to ceftriaxone and roughly 15% were non-susceptible to azithromycin. When analyzing both the social and technical results from above, a renewed emphasis and novel perspective needs to be created in order to properly address antibiotic resistance in the rural developing world.

At the beginning of this year (January 2018), the World Health Organization released its initial reports utilizing an innovative reporting system for antibiotic resistance christened Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System (GLASS). This system was developed in order to preserve human and animal health throughout the globe in relation to antibiotics and their resistance. Although GLASS was officially launched in 2015, it is still in its early implementation period with only 22 countries reporting on actual resistance within their nation states and 40 countries reporting on their national surveillance program. However, GLASS aims at a variety of measures that will ensure antibiotic resistance is more appropriately addressed in the rural developing world by providing a standardized approach to collection, analysis, and dissemination of information to participating countries. GLASS will strengthen nation states antibiotic resistance surveillance systems and modify the data being studied from solely laboratory data to epidemiological, clinical, and population-level data. The preliminary results that were released by WHO revealed that across the 22 reporting countries, there were 500,000 individuals suffering from an infectious disease with antibiotic resistance. Although this data varies with completeness and accuracy across countries, the outcomes highlight the global emergency antibiotic resistance posses from the urban developed world to the rural developing world and everywhere in between – these mutated organisms will fail to respect national borders.

The global health bodies throughout the world have initiated programs and offered advice to nations that will serve the battle against antibiotic resistance well. However, the concealed rates of resistance in the rural developing world will need to be undertaken medically and socially in order to properly end this global emergency. Pipeline innovative antibiotics like relebactam, a novel beta-lactamase inhibitor and an educational emphasis on behavior habits will aid these parts of the world – but the health community will fall short unless the world changes its perception of antibiotic resistance in the countryside of Cambodia, the rice terraces of Vietnam, the jungles of Belize, and areas with similar socioeconomic status.