key: cord-0942821-gg9qt98e
authors: Ramírez, Céleo; Durón, Reyna M.
title: The Russia-Ukraine war could bring catastrophic public-health challenges beyond COVID-19
date: 2022-04-12
journal: Int J Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2022.04.016
sha: 2058a7e5e226bac30239ad8dd619b95e563b3a63
doc_id: 942821
cord_uid: gg9qt98e

nan

Dear Editor, Dahl et al. (2022) recently warned in this journal that armed conflict and human displacement by the Russia-Ukraine conflict may increase the burden of tuberculosis in Europe. But there could be more public health problems ahead. Since 2 years ago, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been an important catalyst for international collaboration on public health (Jit et al., 2021) . This collaboration has not been error-free, especially in relation to an equitable distribution of diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines between high-income and low-middle-income countries (Javed & Chattu, 2020) .

The pandemic has been, at least temporarily, a kind of freezer of major war conflicts worldwide due to the joint efforts to mitigate its impact. A better understanding of the virus, growing herd immunity produced by COVID-19 vaccines and/or previous infection (Randolph & Barreiro, 2020; Radbruch & Chang, 2021) , and the transition to less lethal variants (Petersen et al., 2022) Another threat is the use of biological and chemical weapons that disseminate biological agents or toxins to cause harm, disease, and death of humans or animals, and harm the environment (Janseen et al., 2014; Ekzayez et al., 2020) . In no way this type of warfare can be local or easy to contain. The global scientific community must warn the world leaders about the abyss into which humanity can fall, if consensus is not reached in a timely manner to avoid self-destruction.

After the use of nuclear weapons, there will be no winners among survivors. The health systems, especially in the countries most affected by radiation, will have to deal with its short-, medium-, and long-term effects on the population. It is time that states directly or indirectly affected by the Ukraine and Russia conflict cooperate bilaterally or multilaterally to stop the ongoing war.

All authors declare no competing interest related to this paper.

Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana, Honduras.

Not applicable

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CR and RMD developed the concept, reviewed the literature, and wrote the manuscript.