{
  "id": 9175853,
  "title": "Global, regional, and national impact of epidemic disasters on health workforce equality between 1990 and 2019: An ecological and modeling study",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/22/global-regional-and-national-impact-of-epidemic-disasters-on-health",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-22T14:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PLOS Medicine",
    "slug": "plos-medicine",
    "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1005134"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "An ecological and modeling study conducted by Manman Chen and colleagues examined the impact of epidemics on global health workforce equality between 1990 and 2019. The research analyzed 30 years of ecological data from the International Emergency Events Database and HRH density statistics from the Global Burden of Disease study for 194 countries and territories. The study found that a 1 epidemic event increase in the previous year was associated with a 0.0575 (95% CI [0.0185, 0.0964]) decrease in HRH density in the following year. Globally, epidemics resulted in an average loss of 17,549 HRHs or 2.57 per 10,000 HRHs annually. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa had the highest average attributable fractions of 20.52 and 18.03 per 10,000, respectively. Low- and lower-middle-income countries showed higher average attributable fractions than upper-middle- and high-income countries. The top 10 countries with the highest average attributable fractions were all located in sub-Saharan Africa, including Niger, Somalia, and Ethiopia. The study acknowledges potential biases due to uncontrolled confounders, reverse causation, and underestimation in countries with weaker disaster-surveillance systems. In conclusion, epidemics of infectious diseases are associated with HRH losses, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, exacerbating global inequities in the health workforce.",
  "summary": "by Manman Chen, Wanzhou Wang, Feng Sha, Zichen Ye, Yuankai Zhao, Chao Yang, Ze Liang, Yu Jiang, Xijie Wang, Jinling Tang Background Global distribution of human resources for health (HRH) is highly unequal and less resourced regions may particularly be vulnerable to disastrous emergencies. We examined HRH losses attributable to epidemics of infectious diseases, both globally and geographically.…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}