The Information Crisis In Global Health

Newsletter Edition #257 [The Files In-Depth]

Hi,

Accurate, timely and in-depth information flows are the lifeblood of any research. The current crisis in global health is also being exacerbated with disruptions to information, interrupted services, blacking out of politically dictated topics.

These governmental diktats in the United States raise questions on governance, and on the obligations on certain kinds of expected norms and behaviours of how global health research is conducted globally.

In today’s edition, we bring you an update on the information crisis in the field and try to map the immediate and long-term effects on global health.

Thank you for reading.

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Best,

Priti

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Illustration Credit: Amy Clarke, Chembe Collaborative

I. STORY OF THE WEEK

The Information Crisis In Global Health

By Priti Patnaik

Bianca Carvalho contributed to this story

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Global health research was never insulated from politics. But the current crisis germinating in the United States, has blown away any firewall between research institutions and the political establishment.

One of the first casualties of this kind of ill-thought out decision-making is information flows in health and for science in general. The machine works on all kinds of information, powering networks, informing policy choices at every level.

Trump administration’s disruptive decisions ranging from withdrawing from the World Health Organization, to directing American health agencies to withhold information, from suspending aid to thousands of organizations globally, to cutting funding on research, has a staggering cumulative impact on global health, whose implications experts and practitioners are still trying to understand. Affected communities are already paying a price with their health and lives.

In these early, but hugely consequential days of the new administration in the U.S., there are emerging signs on what this choking of information flows mean for global health.

In this story we piece together what has been documented over the last few weeks since Donald Trump assumed office on January 20, 2025.

There are many kinds of information that is usually shared by WHO member states across diseases and conditions. The network effect means that information that is shared gets used, and packaged for different kinds of activities from the field to the lab onto production.

The set of decisions from the Trump administration affects these flows in different ways. These include an outright blockage of information, or cutting funds for networks that address emergencies. (See Bloomberg: As Measles Cases Surge in Texas, WHO’s Global Control Program Risks Collapse)

We consider the impact of this crisis in information at two levels: looking at the immediate, short term implications, and the long term impact. Together these will shape global health security concerns, and affect the abilities of systems to respond.

It is a legitimate question to ask whether one member state could have such an outsized influence on the field. As we reported on in these pages previously, the American integration in global health is at multiple levels including on financing, expertise and information flows. The current disruption therefore, has immediate and yet unforeseen impacts around the world.

In this story, we present statements made by senior WHO officials, and other experts on the evolving situation on information flows and how they affect ongoing outbreaks of Influenza, Ebola, Marburg and Mpox. We also review the more long term impacts on the field as a result of these actions in the U.S.

Image Credit: Photo by Adrien Olichon, Pexels