How Nigeria defeated Ebola

Indigenous Australians have fared far better than tribal regions in other parts of the world during the coronavirus pandemic due to a collaborative and proactive health campaign between health experts and aboriginal leaders. According to an Australian epidemiologist specializing in public health, “This is a most amazing response to the pandemic from a community that is so marginalized. This is probably the best evidence we have that if you put Aboriginal people in charge, then you get better outcomes.”

The United States and Italy have been playing catch up in the mitigation of the coronavirus pandemic and were resistant to implementing social distancing, while other countries took more aggressive approaches. Now both countries are looking to China and South Korea to learn how sweeping actions and industrialized scaling of measures such as fever clinics, temperature check points, portable CAT scanning, and social isolation, have helped to contain the pandemic.

A nonprofit in Haiti called SOIL with a business arm called EkoLakay is bringing back the old-fashioned idea of a container-based sanitation system. Customers rent toilets with containers in them, use them, and return them to EkoLakay to then be converted into highly nutritious compost. Piloted in 2011, the program has been successful serving more than 1,000 households (growing by 40 every month) with a staff of 58 mostly local workers. They attribute their success to using "applied resilience thinking", having many actors at different levels, and constantly adapting to new solutions and knowledge.

A wastewater infrastructure crisis in the southern United States is much like those found in far less-developed countries. Now researchers and nonprofits are looking to successes in Africa, in an effort to eradicate obscure diseases and improve quality of life.

"Poor man Instagram" is how vets at Chiang Mai University describe their system of pandemic preparedness and emergency prevention. Recruiting community members throughout the region to be disease detectives, the scientists train these volunteers to use a mobile app that allows them to document dead animals that may have been sick with an illness that could pose a threat to humans. When scientists are alerted of cases, they are then able to investigate and intervene if the situation merits danger.

When a case of the Ebola disease struck a little girl in Africa, health officials in Mali collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization to contain the illness and quarantine people. The episode also has changed social customs and expanded sanitation procedures so that more people are aware of how to keep themselves healthy.

In the push to pass SB 277, a California bill that sought to do away with personal belief exemptions for vaccine requirements and keep unvaccinated children from attending school, lawmakers invited the family of Rhett Krawitt, who was immunocompromised due to leukemia, to speak in favor of the legislation. The personal testimony helped ensure the bill’s passage and childhood vaccination rates in California have risen as national rates have fallen, with the rate of kindergarten MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccinations at 96.2% as of 2023.

Local agencies tasked with controlling disease-spreading organisms are releasing sterile male mosquitoes to help reduce the pest’s population and prevent the spread of dengue. This strategy has decreased the mosquito population by about 82% in parts of Southern California, marking the first time in eight years that the population has declined instead of increased.

Teams of Community Direct Distributors (CDD) are leading drug distribution campaigns to prevent and eliminate neglected tropical diseases in hard-to-reach, rural areas. These CDDs are members of the community they serve and are trained to educate the locals on disease prevention and administer the drugs themselves. With the CDDs’ help, several states have already eliminated some diseases and greatly reduced the spread of others.

In collaboration with local government and organizations, The Carter Center launched an initiative to curb the spread of neglected tropical diseases, like river blindness. Throughout the initiative, the Center provided health education to rural communities most affected by the disease and also led a mass drug administration of Mectizan, which is known to kill the parasite that causes river blindness. Over 20 years, the Center administered 27 million doses of the medication, effectively eliminating the disease.