For how we live.
Outbreaks, the WHO, health financing, and systems beyond the U.S.
WHO validated Bhutan's elimination of dog-transmitted human rabies, a disease almost always fatal once symptoms appear. The country has recorded zero such deaths since June 2023.
WHO validated Timor-Leste's elimination of trachoma, the last suspected focus in its South-East Asia Region. A 2025 survey of 4,949 young children found no transmission requiring intervention.
An interim report in NEJM Evidence links the parasitic outbreak to iceberg lettuce and one restaurant chain, with cases spread across most of the state.
WHO recorded serogroup W135 disease in pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia in early 2025. A modelling study estimates high vaccination coverage would cut expected cases by more than 80%.
Gavi is funding a standing mpox vaccine stockpile, coordinated by the same group that manages emergency supplies for cholera, yellow fever and Ebola, to avoid repeating the 2022 access gap.
A meta-analysis of more than 155,000 children finds mortality is elevated even at oxygen saturations of 90–94%, above the threshold at which WHO advises hospital oxygen.
THESUS-HF II enrolled 1,578 patients across 50 hospitals in 17 countries. Guideline drugs were prescribed at discharge in most patients, and target doses were reached in fewer than half.
A facility-based study of 5,053 infants finds undernutrition begins earlier than the age group nutrition programmes usually screen — and that weight-for-age caught far more of it than arm-circumference tape.
WHO's latest update records 1,129 more confirmed cases in twelve days and a case fatality ratio of 48.1%. Transmission is now confined to Congo, across 60 health zones in six provinces.
The Gates Foundation has committed to a decade of funding for the world's most-used health estimates. Science reports the criticism that has followed the study for years: opacity.
A frontier analysis of two decades attributes 97.6% of nutritional disparities between countries to inefficiency rather than to resources. The policy reading is contestable; the decoupling is not.
The country's blood-spot programme has run since 2003 and reaches nearly every baby. A pilot adds genomic sequencing — where a study of Qatari genomes suggests the biggest gains lie.
In South Kivu, ophthalmologists examined 310 patients with confirmed clade Ib mpox at four time points. Periorbital lesions and severe acute malnutrition tripled the risk of ocular involvement.
A national survey finds treatment volumes above 2021 levels and linear accelerators replacing cobalt-60 units. Nearly every department still using cobalt says replacing the source is now unfeasible.
Before October 2023, Palestinian health authorities had documented 50 people living with HIV in Gaza. A viewpoint argues the collapse of testing and treatment has since erased that count entirely.
A registry analysis of Abyan Governorate from 2020 to 2024 puts numbers on a vaccine-preventable disease that returned as immunisation coverage fell — with the heaviest toll among children aged 5 to 9.
A geostatistical re-estimate puts the global toll at 2.1 million envenomings and 274,000 deaths a year at minimum, with African incidence nearly three times South Asia's — against a short antivenom supply.
The emergency funding is meant to keep trauma care, disease surveillance and maternal care running in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, atop a regional appeal only 37% funded.
Twenty hospital and health-facility projects, worth $462 million, are meant to reduce how often Kuwaitis have to travel overseas for specialized care. Thirteen are already under construction.
The country became the first in its region to receive shipments through a WHO-backed platform supplying 46 essential cancer drugs — refugees included, at no cost.
The reform followed an investigation into training quality at some foreign schools. It is also projected to disproportionately affect Arab professionals, a large share of those graduates.
The committee that decides what Israel's national insurance covers added new cancer and depression drugs to the 2026 list — and turned down an early Alzheimer's treatment because of what it would have cost.
Under-25s lost about 5 points on a 100-point wellbeing scale between 2019 and 2021. Adults 19 to 24 have clawed back two-thirds of that loss. Teenagers 15 to 18 have recovered barely a third.
PBAC recommended subsidized listing in November 2025 for adults with obesity and a history of heart attack or stroke. Price negotiations with Novo Nordisk had not concluded.
Vaping among 18-to-35-year-olds fell from 17.3% to 14.2% in a year, a real decline but a small one against how much vaping had grown before the crackdown.
The national framework tracking First Nations health finds real progress on smoking, education and specific diseases, alongside no movement on infant mortality and worsening suicide.
A $7.9 billion program now pays practices an additional 12.5% on top of the standard Medicare rebate for every bulk-billed visit — split evenly between the clinic and the doctor who sees the patient.
The new Aged Care Act mandates 215 minutes of direct care per resident per day. Since April, providers who don't actually deliver those minutes lose funding over it — not just a warning.
429 cases across nine countries, and a mosquito species that transmits two other viruses now established in 16 European countries — double the number from twelve years ago.
Coverage access rose from 86% to 96.4% of the population in four years. The government's own target — 80 years by 2030 — is now less than a year of progress away.
An analysis of a decade of surveillance data shows the system leans heavily on hospitals and misses cases in the community — the weakness that lets measles circulate undetected between outbreaks.
The Dubai Longevity Authority will oversee everything from lab research to the clinics selling anti-aging treatments — a regulatory structure that doesn't really exist yet anywhere else.
The Bundibugyo virus epidemic is now the largest Ebola outbreak in Congo's history. WHO's emergency committee met again this week; MSF says the response still isn't reaching people fast enough.
More than 410,000 probable cases so far in 2026, against 1.45 million for all of 2025. One state, Minas Gerais, accounts for roughly a sixth of the national case total on its own.
Fatal disease burden fell 10% in two decades. Non-fatal burden — the toll of living with illness rather than dying from it — rose 7% over the same period. Mental health diagnoses in young adults nearly doubled.
A review pooling prevalence across the region ties the projection to modifiable risks that are unusually common there — smoking, inactivity, diabetes — layered on rapid ageing.
A systematic review of the Syrian crisis and infectious disease in Lebanon names overcrowding, poor sanitation and blocked healthcare access — not the presence of refugees themselves — as the reported drivers.
A ruling comes in November. The country has held the status since 2000, and 2026 has already produced more cases than any year in three decades.
A narrative review synthesising WHO, UNRWA and Gaza health-ministry field data reports the re-emergence of hepatitis A and poliovirus, over 200,000 diarrhoeal cases, and drug-resistant hospital pathogens.
New GBD analysis across 21 countries finds one group whose burden fell — children — while incidence rose 92% overall and the sex pattern inverted.
A rescreen of 1,000 acute febrile illness samples from Loreto found the virus circulating endemically rather than in a single outbreak, including in a remote riverine community.
ECDC data show near-zero hepatitis B in under-fives and vertical transmission below 2%, alongside five million chronic infections and only seven countries meeting the harm-reduction benchmark.
Nine countries have launched lenacapavir for HIV prevention, with roughly 66,000 people newly started on it. In at least two countries, demand has already outrun the available doses.
The seventh session on the pathogen-sharing annex ran nearly twice as long as previous rounds. WHO says the text is narrowing. A new deadline, set in May, gives them until next year.
An analysis of 15 years of case data from Altamira, in the Xingu Basin, finds forest edge and local population size — not climate — explained where transmission returned.
Two months after the emergency declaration, confirmed cases in DRC have passed 2,100 and spread to 46 health zones. There is still no approved vaccine or treatment — but patients are now being enrolled in one.
Two 2026 papers describe the same shift: rural incidence now exceeds urban in some years, the peak has slid to October and November, and one in six hospitalised patients progressed to severe disease.
Four years after the virus was first detected in south-eastern Australia, interviews in Tamworth find eligibility for a free vaccine has not translated into uptake.
CDC data through July 2 puts 2026 at 2,170 confirmed cases, just short of all of 2025's 2,289. Ninety-three percent of this year's cases are linked to active outbreaks.
Thirteen cases and three deaths, tracked across 33 countries and territories. The final determination rested on one thing: 653 contacts completing 42 days of monitoring without a single new case.
A single patient is on ventilatory support in Kozhikode. WHO says 104 contacts are being monitored and the source of infection has not been identified.
Five weeks into the Bundibugyo virus emergency, WHO says some new cases reflect transmission that had gone undetected for weeks — a sign the outbreak may be larger than the count shows.
Guangdong recorded 25,335 local cases in 2025 — 98% of everything China has ever reported. Genomic analysis finds every Chinese outbreak lineage matching a recent import.
A scoping review of 171 studies found output peaked in 2019, fell during COVID, and left the genomic surveillance of a coronavirus with pandemic potential thinly covered.
WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on 17 May. By early June, confirmed cases had climbed past 500 and Africa CDC put a price tag on the continental response: $518 million.
Stroke is the world's second-leading cause of death and third-leading cause of disability. The new resolution asks countries to build stroke-ready emergency systems, not just treat risk factors.
The World Health Assembly gave negotiators another year — or a special session later this year — to finish the annex that has to be adopted before the pandemic agreement can open for signature.
A CDC surveillance summary puts 2024 at 359% above the 2010–2023 annual average. The 2.8% that were locally acquired are the part that changes what mosquito control has to plan for.
Eight confirmed cases, 246 suspected, and 80 suspected deaths in eastern DRC were enough for the Director-General to invoke his highest level of alarm — before convening the emergency committee that usually comes first.
A Lancet evaluation of the RTS,S introduction in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi reports a 13% drop in mortality among vaccine-eligible children — achieved with third-dose coverage of 71% and fourth-dose uptake under 40%.
Five confirmed cases and three deaths, all linked to Andes virus, the only hantavirus known to pass between people. WHO calls the public health risk low but says more cases are possible.
WHO's latest mpox report shows global case counts holding steady, but flags a Sindh province cluster where nearly all deaths were in babies under six months old.
WHO's latest tally puts the 2026 year-to-date count at 58,740 cases and 732 deaths across 22 countries, down sharply from last year except in conflict-affected states.
The FY2027 request would cut global health funding by $4.3 billion and eliminate WHO, PAHO and UNFPA outright. Three weeks later House appropriators proposed a smaller cut.
WHO reports 19,161 suspected cases and 166 deaths in a single month, most in children under five. The country had been close to eliminating the disease.
The estimate covers 2000 to 2023 and 108 countries. It is a counterfactual model, not a measured saving, and it lands as the US and other donors debate cutting the disease-specific funding it credits.
The sixth negotiating round on the WHO Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex was supposed to finish text ahead of May's World Health Assembly. Member states pushed the deadline to late April instead.
The regional health agency counted 34 confirmed cases and 15 deaths in the first seven weeks of 2026, after 2025 brought the highest South American case total in over two decades.
Products reached 99 countries before recalls began. WHO's first Disease Outbreak News report on the event lists 144 suspected and confirmed illnesses and calls the risk moderate.
PAHO counted 14,891 confirmed cases across the Americas in 2025, a 32-fold rise on 2024. Six South American countries reported cases, and only a third of the region's countries reach the coverage that stops outbreaks.
WHO's Emergency Committee extended the public health emergency for three more months. Wild poliovirus cases dropped from 99 to 40, while vaccine-derived strains spread to two new countries.
Fourteen months after an undiagnosed febrile outbreak alarmed the world, sequencing and PCR on 108 patients found no novel pathogen — half had falciparum malaria and many had a respiratory co-infection.
Negotiators finished a week in Geneva with a plan to streamline the text and consult separately on the hard parts. The treaty cannot open for signature until the annex is adopted.
The first independent population-representative mortality survey in the Gaza Strip estimates 75,200 violent deaths through early January 2025 — and finds fewer non-violent excess deaths than some models predicted.
WHO reports two cases of a monkeypox virus carrying genetic material from both clade Ib and clade IIb. The finding that matters for surveillance is that clade differentiation PCR missed it both times.
The patient drank raw date palm sap through most of January. Thirty-five contacts are under monitoring, and the six who developed symptoms have tested negative.
Global oral cholera vaccine supply has roughly doubled since 2022, enough to release 20 million doses for prevention rather than outbreak response. Nearly all of it comes from a single company.
The Lancet Global Health paper that produced this month's headline number also produced a larger one: 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030 if defunding deepens. The distinction matters more than the figure.
WHO was notified on January 26 of the third Nipah outbreak recorded in West Bengal. There is no licensed vaccine or drug, and the source of exposure is still under investigation.
WHO's year-end tally records 614,828 cases across 33 countries. December brought a decline — and the reported figures are known to be a fraction of the true burden.
The Ministry of Health declared the end on January 26, two incubation periods after the last confirmed patient was buried. No vaccine or drug for Marburg is approved anywhere.
Negotiators on the Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex met January 20–22 and reported emerging consensus on parts of the system. The deadline is the World Health Assembly in May.
Washington intends to provide up to $792 million over five years. Malawi commits the rest — and the money is meant to flow through the government rather than NGOs.
Household cure rates were 88.5 percent with permethrin against 71.8 percent with ivermectin. The trial set out to show ivermectin was non-inferior and found the opposite.
Nineteen MERS cases were reported worldwide in 2025, seventeen of them in Saudi Arabia. The two in France are the first infections detected outside the region in six years.
The year-end immunization summary reports 88% fewer measles deaths since 2000, malaria vaccine in 24 African countries, and 25 years without wild polio in the Western Pacific.
The first nationally representative analysis of the 2024 conflict in Lebanon draws on hospital and ministry records. Its most consequential number is how many of the dead arrived already dead.
A Washington State adult died on 21 November after infection with an avian influenza subtype never before found in a person. Contact tracing found no onward spread. Europe is having a record autumn bird season.
Zoliflodacin is the first antibiotic developed solely for gonorrhoea in decades, and a non-profit holds the rights to register it across most of the world.
WHO and the World Bank put the global service coverage index at 71, up from 54 in 2000. On current trends it reaches only 74 by 2030.
Negotiators met in Geneva for five days and agreed to come back in January. Until the annex is adopted, the pandemic agreement cannot even open for signature.
The Bulape outbreak in Kasai Province ended 88 days after it was declared, with a case fatality ratio above 70% and nearly 48,000 people vaccinated.
The recommendations are conditional, cover three drugs, and come with a projection that fewer than one in ten people who could benefit will have access by 2030.
In a controlled human infection trial, high-dose mosnodenvir suppressed DENV-3 far below placebo. Resistance-associated changes appeared in every sequenced recipient and none of the placebo group.
WHO has graded the regional resurgence a level 2 emergency. Only 5.7% of the 20,412 suspected cases were laboratory-confirmed, and the antitoxin that prevents most deaths is in global short supply.
New EGASP surveillance data released for World AMR Awareness Week show cefixime resistance up from 1.7% to 11% and ciprofloxacin resistance at 95% across 12 reporting countries.
Six laboratory-confirmed cases and three probable ones have been reported from Jinka town. All deaths involved unsupervised burials — the step in the chain that historically turns a cluster into an outbreak.
IARC and WHO put five modules on screening and precancer management online. The 90-70-90 targets they support depend on health workers who can act on a positive test.
A WHO and Brazil special report released on the summit's Health Day says extreme heat kills over 540,000 people a year and that health facilities face 41% higher weather-damage risk than in 1990.
WHO's Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 counts 10.7 million people ill and over 1.2 million dead last year. Available funding is US$5.9 billion against a US$22 billion annual target.
WHO validated Egypt as the 27th country to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem. Its programme began in 2002; the disease still blinds or impairs about 1.9 million people elsewhere.
A TB vaccine financing plan, six target product profiles for children's cancer drugs, and a paediatric research agenda. All three are attempts to specify a product before a market decides to build it.
WHO reports 404 confirmed human cases across the two countries in six weeks. The case fatality ratio is 30% in Mauritania and 7.8% in Senegal — a gap that says more about detection than about the virus.
A new GBD analysis puts sepsis-related deaths at 21.4 million, roughly double the 11.0 million estimated for 2017 — a change driven partly by COVID-19 and partly by a different method.
The modelling study puts 719,384 people on PEPFAR-funded oral PrEP in 28 African countries at the end of 2024. Most projected infections fall on key populations whose coverage was already under 6%.
Age-standardised disability-adjusted life-years fell 12.6% since 2010, but the raw total rose 6.1% to 2.80 billion. Anxiety, depression and diabetes rose fastest even after adjusting for ageing.
A UNRWA surveillance dataset of 265,974 arm-circumference measurements shows wasting rising during blockade, falling during ceasefire, then rising again — an unusually direct record of cause and effect.
A prospective cohort of 88 index cases and 432 household contacts found a secondary attack rate of 6.15%, three times higher in under-15s. The estimated R0 inside households was 0.30.
The agency stops short of calling 2025 a global surge. Its own regional tables show why: the Americas and the Indian Ocean drove the total while the Philippines and Malaysia reported fewer cases than last year.
Three of the four cases drank raw date palm sap in the usual December-April window. The fourth, a child who fell ill in August, did not — and the source remains under investigation.
Across 165 clinics in four African countries, HIV testing fell by up to 35% and treatment starts by up to 32%. Most services had not returned to baseline two months after the orders were lifted.
In a 774-person randomised trial, community health workers delivering medication at home nearly doubled the share of patients whose blood pressure was controlled at six months.
Sequencing points to a fresh spillover from wildlife rather than a resurgence of the province's earlier outbreaks. Four of the dead are health-care workers.
Nine genetically linked virus isolates from seven environmental sites triggered the declaration. Sequencing traced the lineage back to a paralysis case reported in December 2024.
WHO counted 409,222 cases and 4,738 deaths across 31 countries by 17 August. The divergence between the two trends is the finding, and it points at case management, not transmission.
Kerala's ninth Nipah outbreak since 2018 produced four unlinked cases between April and July, suggesting separate spillovers from bats rather than a chain of human transmission.
The guidelines pair the new injectable with a second, quieter recommendation: use simplified rapid diagnostic testing to start and continue long-acting PrEP, rather than more complex assays.
WHO has logged 11 laboratory-confirmed human A(H5N1) infections in Cambodia between 1 January and 1 July, including six deaths. Every case had handled or culled sick poultry.
A Global Burden of Disease analysis of 204 countries finds 15.7 million children received no DTP dose in 2023, more than half of them in eight countries, and only one of three target vaccines on track for 2030.
Lenacapavir is the first HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis given every six months. Two phase 3 trials found zero and two infections in the lenacapavir groups against background rates above 2 per 100 person-years.