Jonas Salk and the development of polio vaccine

I really enjoyed this piece in The Guardian last week about the recent 100th anniversary of the birth of Jonas Salk, who developed the most used polio vaccine:

Jonas Salk Google doodle: a good reminder of the power of vaccines

The importance of this vaccine can't be overstated - a devastating, incurable illness with long-lasting effects on thousands of sufferers and their families has been eradicated from almost every country on the globe in just a couple of generations.  It's truly one of the great achievements of public health research.

The article gives an idea of the scale of the undertaking, and the combination of different steps forward from dozens of scientist working in many areas, including e.g. cell line development.  And then I discovered I had yet another reason to recommend it - I noticed it's written by an old school friend of mine, Pete Etchells, who is now a lecturer in Biological Psychology at Bath Spa university and writing regularly for the Guardian.    

Ebola and malaria

There's a very good article on the BBC today about the effect the current Ebola outbreak is having on the fight against malaria in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.  It's a very unfortunate combination of two problems - the fact that limited resources (particularly medical staff) are now being severely stretched, and that the similarity of symptoms in the early stages of both diseases is leading to reduced treatment seeking.

“These countries have previously been really hit by malaria. But five years ago, it was even worse - the deaths were double.

We all agree that no child should die from malaria, because we have the tools to prevent and treat it.

But now, understandably, all the health workers’ attention is on Ebola.

We used to see hospital beds with three children in them at a time, because there was not enough space.

Now those paediatric wards are becoming ghost areas, because of the lack of manpower there. So we don’t know who has malaria, and who is dying from it. Even if the situation is at the same level as last year, that was still very bad in those countries. We’re really concerned that Ebola will cause a setback to the efforts on malaria.

And there’s a lack of trust and confidence in health workers. There’s still a feeling it’s them who are bringing the virus to people.”

— Dr Fatoumata Nafo-Traoré, Roll Back Malaria, speaking to the BBC

The effect of Ebola on malaria transmission, and of concomitant malaria on Ebola survival, are certainly areas with many open questions.

Health Atlas of England and Wales

Today there were quite a few news stories about a new Health Atlas of England and Wales produced by the Small Area Health Statistics Unit at Imperial College.

It shows on a very fine resolution the relative risk for a number of important diseases and environmental factors, adjusted for age, sex, deprivation and small numbers.  Some of the patterns have relatively simple explanations (NO2 concentrations high near cities, attributable to traffic and industry), but others are both fascinating and hard to explain.

Relative risk map for malignant melanoma (Environmental Health Atlas for England and Wales under CC license)

 For example, for malignant melanoma there is a clear high relative risk in Devon and Cornwall which could be partially explained by the greater hours of sunlight it receives - but why is the south east not similarly affected despite its similar sun exposure?  What is the reason for the cluster of high relative risk in Cumbria?

This looks like a great resource for generating hypotheses and testing new analysis methods in spatial statistics.