Gene therapy is effective against many diseases and even has the potential to address enduring global health challenges like HIV. However, gene therapy as it currently exists is astronomically expensive to develop and administer. What’s more, the burden of diseases that may be most susceptible to gene therapy, such as sickle cell disease and potentially HIV, is concentrated primarily in the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. My guest today, Dr. Boro Dropulic, is working to close that gap and bring these advanced therapies to places where they are needed most. He is the Executive Director of Caring Cross, a nonprofit dedicated to both developing advanced medical cures and making them widely accessible. In our conversation, he explains why these gene therapies are so expensive today and how to make them affordable for health systems in the developing world.

If you are a regular listener to the podcast and reader of our associated Global Dispatches newsletter, you know that I believe one of the most important issues in the world today is the growing gap between humanitarian needs and the funding available to meet those needs. Climate change and conflicts are causing a surge in the number of people around the world who require a modicum of humanitarian aid to survive. Yet, funding has not kept pace. Far from it. The gap is large and growing. In response to this pressure, one of the largest and oldest international humanitarian organizations, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, is trying something new. While they still rely on traditional donors, mostly wealthier Western countries, they are also experimenting with innovative financing schemes. This includes using insurance in novel ways and exploring how to issue bonds or sell carbon credits to fund their humanitarian work. Joining me to discuss how the IFRC is approaching these complex financial instruments is Nena Stoiljkovic, IFRC's Under Secretary General for Global Relations and Humanitarian Diplomacy. We kick off by discussing why climate change is driving up the costs of humanitarian response and the IFRC's new program to support climate-resilient communities before diving into a longer conversation about the novel ways in which the IFRC plans to finance that, along with its regular disaster response.

In mid-August, the United States and Switzerland hosted peace talks for Sudan's warring parties. The talks took place outside Geneva at a time when the conflict was exacting a massive toll on the civilian population of Sudan. Just as the talks were getting underway, the UN confirmed a famine in a massive IDP camp in Darfur. Meanwhile, over 10 million people have been displaced by the fighting, making it the largest humanitarian crisis in the world by the numbers. There have been some attempts at international mediation, none of which have stuck. Over the summer, the newly appointed U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, began laying the groundwork for these talks in Switzerland, which only recently concluded. There is obviously still no ceasefire in Sudan, but according to my guest today, Cameron Hudson, Senior Fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the talks nonetheless did achieve important progress on getting humanitarian aid to beleaguered populations.

Ever since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban three years ago, I have periodically checked in with my guest today, Zuhra Bahman. She is the Afghanistan Country Director for Search for Common Ground, an NGO focused on peacebuilding. When the Taliban toppled the Afghan government and asserted control in Kabul, Zuhra Bahman happened to be out of the country on a business trip. However, she was determined to return, and she did. As she explained in our previous conversations, she felt an obligation to influence the direction of her country under Taliban rule, improve the lives of women and girls, and promote local peacebuilding efforts. In our conversation today, I ask her: Has she been successful? More broadly, Zuhra Bahman explains how consistent engagement with the Taliban authorities has led to some incremental gains, and she argues why the international community ought to deal directly and consistently with the Taliban.

On August 14th, the World Health Organization declared MPOX a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern." This is the highest level of alarm that the WHO can issue to confront a public health crisis, and it was triggered in response to a rapidly spreading outbreak in Central Africa. As my guest, Dr. Eric Toner, explains, this MPOX outbreak is different from the one two years ago due to the fact that this new strain of the virus is both more deadly and more transmissible. Dr. Eric Toner is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He explains the differences between the strains and what we know so far about how MPOX is spreading within Central Africa and, more recently, to other continents. We have a lengthy discussion about how to contain the outbreak, which includes deploying effective vaccines. However, the problem is that the supply is limited and controlled by just a handful of vaccine manufacturing companies.