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I’m Daisuke Sano from the Faculty of Engineering.
I’d like to start with a quote from Kenji Miyazawa, who said, “Individuals can’t be happy unless the whole world is happy.”
The wisdom this idea comes from may be rooted in the essence of human emotions
because initiatives based on the sentiment are in progress worldwide.
These initiatives relate to global health
– a term that encompasses endeavors to improve health and eliminate disparity among people around the world.
I believe the importance of global health is easy for everybody to understand,
and various efforts to achieve it are under way worldwide.
Efforts to eradicate poverty and epidemics are one example.
If you began an activity aimed at achieving global health,
what would be the first thing you’d need to do?
First, you’d need to identify the problems.
Unless you know what’s threatening global health, you can’t create countermeasures.
But that alone isn’t enough.
Of course, the problems at hand need to be solved,
but are they the first things to tackle?
Naturally, activity funds are limited.
In today’s global economic crisis, loss of funding for global health may be a reality.
Although you’d have to address a range of issues to achieve global health,
your activity funds would be limited.
With this in mind, you’d need to set priorities after identifying the problems.
Global Burden of Disease (GBD) is a WHO project.
It is designed to logically set the order of priority for addressing challenges to the achievement of global health.
GBD numerically evaluates burdens imposed by specific risk factors in different parts of the world.
Examples of statistics include the number of deaths and the number of people who become ill.
Factors contributing to higher mortality rates and sick populations need to be tackled preferentially.
If we use mortality as an indicator, for example,
what is the order of priority ?
This graph was tabulated by WHO.
High blood pressure, tobacco use, high blood glucose, physical inactivity ranked highly.
These factors claim many lives around the world.
I’ve involved in research on water.
A lack of clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing is ranked 11th among the 15 leading risk factors.
Investing an equal amount of money into addressing all these factors won’t result in saving the same number of lives.
Cost-effectiveness surveying is needed for each risk factor to clarify the effectiveness of investment.
However, if mortality is used as an indicator, basing countermeasures or investment on this ranking makes sense.
That said, mortality alone doesn’t represent the whole burden placed on society.
What about the effects of long-term hospitalization, for example?
People who are hospitalized can’t work or pay medical expenses.
When calculating burdens on society,
the number of people who fall ill and the duration and severity of illnesses should also be considered.
As a single statistic representing mortality as well as numbers of sick people and the duration and severity of illnesses,
the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) was developed.
It combines these numbers with different units into a single number,
so there are pros and cons about its value as an indicator.
But it’s used to gain a general idea of the global burden of disease, or GBD.
A higher DALY value indicates a higher priority for addressing the risk factor it relates to.
Let’s see how the earlier ranking changes when DALYs are considered.
Societal loss caused by unsafe water rises to fourth place
because it not only increases mortality but also deprives society of vitality due to increased incidence of illness.
We are striving to achieve global health by minimizing losses resulting from unsafe water.
Technical development is a field of engineering.
It can make a significant contribution to global health in the area of water purification.
Making river water and groundwater drinkable and treating wastewater from toilets, for example.
The ability to produce more clean water at lower cost will mitigate societal loss from unsafe water.
It will also contribute to the realization of global health.
Specific examples of contribution are seen in a wide range of fields,
including the development of materials to coagulate and remove substances in water, and membrane materials to filter water.
The development of various new water sanitation technologies is expected in the coming years.
You might even be the ones who develop them!
But there are also other things we need to consider.
For example, technologies used in developed nations can’t be applied to developing nations for various reasons,
such as a lack of engineers.
This means that as well as developing technologies, engineers also need to play major roles in implementing them.
Put another way, appropriate goal setting is needed.
In goal setting, engineers clarify how and to what degree water should be purified, or set goals to be achieved via technology.
To do this, they need to grasp the characteristics of individual engineering technologies and consider running costs.
This helps them determine what technologies to use as well as where and how.
They also need to think about preventing health hazards by appropriately determining the degree of water purification.
Let’s look at how the degree of purification is decided.
We put this virus, which is found in river water, into human-derived cells so that it can be cultured in a laboratory.
[Human hepatocytes]
If the count of this type of virus is high, it will infect and destroy cells,
but if it stays below a certain concentration, it won’t affect cells even if it’s present.
This is thanks to innate immunity, which recognizes and removes pathogens entering the human body.
This graph shows levels of expression of TLR3 – a gene related to innate immunity.
The workings of innate antiviral genes like this prevent cell destruction.
So, the acceptable concentration of a virus in water can be taken as the level that can be dealt with by innate immunity.
Everybody is different, and river water contains lots of things other than viruses,
so the matter isn’t quite that simple.
Although these experiments involve pathogens and human cells,
they should be implemented with sustainability in mind by experts in engineering, not by medical professionals.
Let’s look at some examples of career paths for people aspiring to do this kind of engineering work.
Graduates from the school of engineering have a great record of securing employment.
You can take national exams for work at central government ministries or agencies.
Working for the regions where you are from as a local government employee is another option.
Of course, we’re always pleased to have graduates work with us as researchers.
Now, let’s look at a career most of you probably haven’t thought of.
It’s international civil service.
People who work for the U.N., the World Bank, UNESCO, WHO and other international organizations are called international civil servants.
Does anyone here know how to become one?
Simply put, you need to be able to work using either English or French,
and have either a master’s degree or a doctorate.
Some posts require work experience, but not all of them.
You might think only people with humanities degrees become international civil servants.
But who will deal with the technologies needed for global health?
International civil servants with solid engineering knowledge are in high demand today.
Imagine working in a cosmopolitan city like New York, Geneva or Brussels.
I hope you will have a chance to work on the world stage as international civil servants with engineering degrees.
Thank you for your attention.