Ok it's that time again. For the new folks, every two weeks I do a Good News dump, a long thread of Good News you might or might not have heard about. If you wish to remain in doom scrolling mode, please mute this hashtag for a couple of hours. Ok. Here we go.
Hang on this is a long one.
Between 2000 and 2020, the global population with access to safely managed drinking water services has increased from 3.8 billion to 5.8 billion people. That means 90% of human beings now have access to either basic or safely managed drinking water services - the highest proportion in our species' history.
The UN is calling it a 'historic change.' Between 2005 and 2019, nearly 415 million people in India were lifted out of what is known as multidimensional poverty, a measure that includes health, education and standard of living. Children saw the fastest reduction, with child poverty falling from 34.7% to 21.8%.
In the decade before the pandemic, 72 countries reduced poverty. One of those was Nepal, which reduced the proportion of people living in multi-dimensional poverty from 39.1% in 2010 to 17.7% in 2019. This was accompanied by the country's largest ever reduction in the proportion of people deprived of sanitation —from 60.6% in 2011 to 21.4% in 2019.
A new dengue vaccine that cuts the risk of fever by 61% and hospitalisation by 84% is on the cusp of being approved by the European Medicines Agency. Big news. Global dengue cases have almost doubled over the last three decades, and the only other vaccine we've tried wasn't safe. This new one is.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/new-vaccine-protect-people-eu-worldwide-against-dengue
And
The arrival of two vaccines for malaria portends a sea change for humanity's efforts to fight one of our greatest scourges. The first, Mosquirix, was approved by the WHO last year and will begin distribution in 2023. A more powerful vaccine with up to 80% efficacy, developed by a team at Oxford, is also just a year or two away.
Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Of course you do. Well, the FDA recently approved a new drug for Lou Gehrig's disease that was partially funded by those proceeds, and the ALS Association says the remaining funds are supporting funding 130 research projects in 12 different countries, as well as 40 potential treatments in development.
