Julian Heinonen

Have you ever had smallpox? It’s a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that killed an estimated 300 to 500 million people in the 20th century. If you were born in 1980 or later, you most likely haven’t had it. This is because, in 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared smallpox eradicated. But how? Population immunization is a public health strategy that protects communities from infectious diseases by using vaccines. The more people who are vaccinated, the higher the rate...

According to UN Weather report, there were approximately 489,000 heat-related deaths annually between 2000 and 2019, with 36 per cent occurring in Europe and 45 per cent in Asia. With global warming making extreme weather phenomena more and more common, heat waves have also begun to break records. While some may welcome the seemingly sunnier summers, for millions this weather anomaly entails being hit hard physically and economically. Rising temperatures bring with them droughts, that...