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Begin New Search Topic Infectious Diseases Publication Year within 5 Years

1. Disease Mix and How Economic Freedom Matters for Health Outcomes

Author:
Vincent Geloso, Kelly Hyde, and Ilia Murtazashvili
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
We investigate the institutional foundations of public health. We argue that a key distinction in analysis of disease is between diseases of commerce (diseases associated with movement of people and with affluence) and diseases of poverty (primarily noncommunicable diseases that depend on wealth and income). We show that the mix of disease – the ratio of communicable diseases and those associated with longevity to diseases of poverty – increases in economically free countries. We argue that increasing burdens of diseases of commerce reflects the quality of institutions, as those diseases are better than living shorter, brutish lives where diseases of poverty claim many lives. This analysis also highlights an institutional trade‐​off: economically free institutions reduce certain types of disease while contributing to others.
Topic:
Health, Infectious Diseases, Economy, Institutions, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Eight Commonsense Actions on Biosafety and Biosecurity

Author:
J. Stephen Morrison and Michaela Simoneau
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Today, there is a shared sense of vulnerability and a shared resolve across political divides to better protect the United States and the world against the accidental release of biological agents (biosafety), deliberate misuse of biological agents (biosecurity), and naturally occurring spillover of dangerous pathogens. Biosafety and biosecurity are critically important areas where individual freedom, ethics, scientific progress, and national security converge. As biological research and discovery accelerate at an unprecedented pace, they generate new risks that must be managed responsibly. The CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security’s Working Group on R&D Innovation advocates select, commonsense actions to strengthen U.S. and global biosafety and biosecurity: clarify U.S. policies and policy leadership within the White House; increase financial and diplomatic investments; update the rules around synthetic products and viral discovery work; and invest in research on basic lab protections and the new risks of artificial intelligence. Together, these timely, affordable steps can attract broad political support and promote a safer, more secure, and more innovative global bioeconomy.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Infectious Diseases, Biosecurity, COVID-19, and Global Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic: Leveraging Biotechnology to Tackle Infectious Diseases in India

Author:
Shruti Sharma
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
In India, the coronavirus pandemic encouraged partnerships between academia and industry, fostered collaboration among competitor companies, and stimulated cooperation within different government departments to leverage biotechnology to develop new test kits, protective equipment, vaccines, and respiratory devices. Despite this collaborative ecosystem, a few stakeholders faced several challenges during different stages of product development including discovery, research and development (R&D), clinical trial, or commercialization of their products. Some of these challenges can be attributed to a lack of an ecosystem that encourages collaborative research in India, limited involvement of private funding entities, a gap between academia and industry where university researchers lack sufficient awareness of the imperatives of industry, and a lack of awareness regarding contemporary applications of biotechnology among the regulatory community. The goal of this paper is to provide all stakeholders and the Indian public an overview of the role that advancements in biotechnology can play in strengthening India’s public health capacity. While the pandemic offered significant opportunities to the scientific community and private players in India to develop medical countermeasures, this paper only illustrates examples that discuss strategies that were adopted to accelerate the development of diagnostics and vaccines in the country. It further elucidates the challenges, both regulatory and funding, that some stakeholders faced in introducing new diagnostics and vaccines into the market during the pandemic. The paper argues that it is important for India to adopt a systematic approach to sustain the collaborative ecosystem that was cultivated during the pandemic. It further provides a brief assessment of the policies that regulate vaccines and diagnostic kits in India and the scope of enhanced and better implementation in the future. The paper also suggests strategies to maintain a continuous flow of investment to sustain research, streamline the regulatory infrastructure to minimize ambiguities regarding product approvals, and foster multistakeholder collaboration to create a sustainable research and innovation ecosystem that can be leveraged during health emergencies in the future.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Public Health, COVID-19, and Biotechnology
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

4. Estimating the prevalence: Properties of the estimator regarding specificity and sensitivity of the underlying test

Author:
Jens Boysen-Hogrefe and Vincent Stamer
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
We provide a calculation tool to assess the properties of a maximumlikelihood (ML) estimator that extrapolates the true prevalence of an infectious disease from a random sample. The tools allow the researcher to correct for the specificity and sensitivity of the underlying medical test, calculate the standard deviation of the estimator and to plan the needed sample size. This document explains the underlying methods of the calculation tools and provides instructions for their proper use. We apply an adaption of the epidemiological SEIR-model to show that ML-estimators from random sampling tests provide a more realistic rate of infection than common approaches.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and Infectious Diseases
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Wealth and Shifting Demand Pressures on the Price Level in England After the Black Death

Author:
Anthony Edo and Jacques Melitz
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
The scale of the rise in personal wealth following the Black Death calls the life-cycle hypothesis of consumption into consideration. This paper shows for the first time that the wealth effect of the Black Death on the price level continued in England for generations, up to 1450. Indeed, in absence of consideration of the wealth effect, other influences on the price level do not even appear in the econometric analysis. The separate roles of coinage, population, trade, wages and annual number of days worked for wages all also receive attention and new results follow for adjustment in the labor market.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Infectious Diseases, Population, Trade, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Europe and England

6. New Findings on Links between Urban Expansion and Viral Disease in Vietnam Offer Lessons for COVID-19

Author:
James H. Spencer, Sumeet Saksena, and Jefferson Fox
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The current COVID-19 pandemic, which started in Wuhan, China, underscores what the public health community has warned about for more than two decades—the risk of viral diseases capable of spreading from animal to human hosts. The first outbreaks of “bird flu” (highly pathogenic avian influenza—HPAI, subtype H5N1)—raised similar concerns 20 years ago, concerns that have persisted with the outbreak of SARS in 2002–2004 and COVID-19 today. A recent study compared information on infrastructure and other aspects of economic development in Vietnam with outbreaks of avian influenza. While this research focuses on avian influenza in Vietnam, the study of links between infrastructure characteristics and new and reemerging health risks has broad applicability, especially given the global importance of today’s rapidly expanding urban landscapes.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Urban, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Vietnam

7. Global Health Security and Pandemics: Why didn't we know this was coming?

Author:
Sophie Harman
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London
Abstract:
This video is the first in a series on global health security and pandemics, presented by Professor Sophie Harman (QMUL). In this episode, she will explore whether we should have seen the current global health crisis coming.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Global Security, Public Health, and Pandemic
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Global Health Security and Pandemics: Community Involvement

Author:
Sophie Harman
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London
Abstract:
The second episode in the series on global health security and pandemics will focus on community involvement and responses to coronavirus. The episode is introduced by Professor Tim Bale and presented by Professor Sophie Harman.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Global Security, Public Health, and Pandemic
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Building Resilient Health Systems: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone and the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

Author:
Bilal Siddiqi, Maarten Voors, Johannes Haushofer, Oeindrila Dube, and Darin Christensen
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Developing countries are characterized by high rates of mortality and morbidity. A potential contributing factor is the low utilization of health systems, stemming from the low perceived quality of care delivered by health personnel. This factor may be especially critical during crises, when individuals choose whether to cooperate with response efforts and frontline health personnel. We experimentally examine efforts aimed at improving health worker performance in the context of the 2014–15 West African Ebola crisis. Roughly two years before the outbreak in Sierra Leone, we randomly assigned two accountability interventions to government-run health clinics — one focused on community monitoring and the other gave status awards to clinic staff. We find that over the medium run, prior to the Ebola crisis, both interventions led to improvements in utilization of clinics and patient satisfaction with the health system. In addition, child health outcomes improved substantially in the catchment areas of community monitoring clinics. During the crisis, the interventions also led to higher reported Ebola cases, as well as lower mortality from Ebola—particularly in areas with community monitoring clinics. We explore three potential mechanisms: the interventions (1) increased the likelihood that patients reported Ebola symptoms and sought care; (2) unintentionally increased Ebola incidence; or (3) improved surveillance efforts. We find evidence consistent with the first: by building trust and confidence in health workers, and improving the perceived quality of care provided by clinics prior to the outbreak, the interventions encouraged patients to report and receive treatment. Our results suggest that accountability interventions not only have the power to improve health systems during normal times, but can additionally make health systems resilient to crises that may emerge over the longer run.
Topic:
Health, Infectious Diseases, Health Care Policy, Mortality, Public Health, and Pandemic
Political Geography:
West Africa and Sierra Leone

10. Firm-Level Exposure to Epidemic Diseases: Covid-19, SARS, and H1N1

Author:
Tarek A. Hassan, Stephan Hollander, Laurence van Lent, and Ahmed Tahoun
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Using tools described in our earlier work (Hassan et al., 2019, 2020), we develop text- based measures of the costs, benefits, and risks listed firms in the US and over 80 other countries associate with the spread of Covid-19 and other epidemic diseases. We identify which firms expect to gain or lose from an epidemic disease and which are most affected by the associated uncertainty as a disease spreads in a region or around the world. As Covid-19 spreads globally in the first quarter of 2020, we find that firms’ primary concerns relate to the collapse of demand, increased uncertainty, and disruption in supply chains. Other important concerns relate to capacity reductions, closures, and employee welfare. By contrast, financing concerns are mentioned relatively rarely. We also identify some firms that foresee opportunities in new or disrupted markets due to the spread of the disease. Finally, we find some evidence that firms that have experience with SARS or H1N1 have more positive expectations about their ability to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
Topic:
Economics, Infectious Diseases, Global Markets, Finance, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus