For how we live.
Outbreaks, the WHO, health financing, and systems beyond the U.S.
A surveillance analysis of WHO data from January 2024 to February 2026 tracks the clade Ib emergency from declaration to its end, and finds reported spread continued after the emergency was formally lifted.
A modelling study of Koungou village, calibrated to daily cases by vaccination status, estimates CVD 103-HgR prevented 87% of cholera and averted hundreds of cases — a first real-world test of a challenge-trial vaccine.
In 544 pregnant women followed across Rio de Janeiro state, adverse maternal outcomes hit 18% of confirmed Oropouche infections versus 7% without, with fetal loss and haemorrhage risks roughly tripled.
The infections, detected across six regions between January and early October, had no links to one another. Globally MERS-CoV has caused 2,643 cases and 965 deaths since 2012.
A case-control study of young children during a statewide whooping-cough outbreak found three or more DTaP doses cut the odds of pertussis by more than 25-fold against unvaccinated peers.
A CDC field report documents the territory's largest dengue wave in over a decade, driven almost entirely by DENV-2, with one death — the first dengue-associated death there since 2005.
A Quezon City hospital reviewed 20 children admitted with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis over 16 years. A quarter arrived in 2022, and the timing points back to the 2018–2019 measles outbreak.
A four-branch surveillance study in children found 2024 Mycoplasma pneumoniae incidence of 546 per 100,000, and genome sequencing showed four new subclades had replaced older lineages by mid-2024.
A Valencia hospital reviewed 108 patients with Candidozyma auris candidemia over eight years. Metastatic infection occurred in 22 percent and roughly doubled the risk of death at 60 and 90 days.
A national surveillance study found 415 children under 15 among Sierra Leone's 2024–2025 clade IIb mpox cases — three died, three-quarters needed hospital care, and household contact was the top documented exposure.
A Global Burden of Disease analysis found early-neonatal mortality in Kazakhstan dropped about 33% from 2010 to 2023 — yet boys kept dying at higher rates than girls, a gap that only recently began to close.
A Global Burden of Disease analysis puts substance use disorder prevalence at 0.78% across the Arab League in 2023, about 63% below the global figure — yet women's opioid prevalence topped men's in 19 of 22 countries.
A 28-year-old technician at a plague research institute in Irkutsk died on 2 October. WHO rates the risk low in Russia and very low in Europe, but has asked Russian authorities to clarify the cause of her pneumonia.
A Global Burden of Disease analysis of Kenya's 47 counties found ischaemic stroke killed 11,328 people in 2023 — death rates are falling even as new cases rise, with raised blood pressure behind 35% of the burden.
Surveillance data show 252 locally acquired dengue cases in the Tampa Bay area by 26 September, 223 of them in Hillsborough County, where an 80-year-old woman has died. Three counties have declared emergencies.
A nationwide Brazilian cohort of 4.1 million children found that babies exposed to Zika in the womb but without congenital Zika syndrome had the same pneumonia-hospitalisation risk as unexposed children.
A first-of-its-kind report from Uzbekistan puts the case-fatality rate at 8.3%. The one sign that predicted death was present in just 3.1% of patients — a warning against waiting for it.
Genomic sequencing identified Haemophilus ducreyi — a bacterium known for a sexually transmitted infection — behind roughly 403 cases in children. Of 156 swabs tested, 61.5% were positive; no yaws was found.
Nearly a third of 68 sampled cases carried the mutation that blocks first-line antibiotics — and the resistant strain hit infants under six months hardest, during an outbreak that reached 4,976 cases and 76 deaths.
A meta-analysis of 15 cohorts found 45% of deaths in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were classed as avoidable — about 3.6 times the rate in people without disabilities, on rich-country data.
Surveillance across seven countries detected Shigella by PCR in 20.0% of diarrhoea episodes in toddlers, and found ciprofloxacin resistance reaching 37.2% — a warning for a disease with no licensed vaccine.
The first dedicated Global Burden of Disease analysis of passive smoking finds exposure falling in relative terms but stuck in absolute numbers, and still causing 1.66 million deaths a year — most from heart disease.
National surveillance recorded 60,826 cases in Japan by July 2025 — about 15 times the previous year's 4054 — concentrated in school-age children, while four other countries had already peaked and declined.
A new history of Norway's 1975 ban — one of the WHO's three 'best buys' against alcohol harm — traces how it survived courts, alcohol-free beer and social media, and why pressure to modernise it worries defenders.
An MMWR report describes 249 cases statewide, 72% of outbreak patients hospitalised and no deaths, and urges vaccination before travel as exposures continue into 2026.
The first GBD 2023 estimate of heart failure maps not just its size but its causes — and the causes split the world: alcohol in eastern Europe, Chagas disease in Latin America, rheumatic disease in the global south.
A GBD 2023 analysis counts the global health workforce by sex for the first time, and finds it nearly tripled since 1990 — yet still falls tens of millions of workers short of universal health coverage.
A diagnostic study reports all 12 cat tissues and 11 of 15 rat tissues tested positive, with the highest viral loads in the brain — evidence small mammals may carry avian influenza.
A new MMWR comparison of five Ebola outbreaks since 2007 shows the Bundibugyo epidemic in Congo outran West Africa and the 2018 DRC outbreak at the same point, with 2,606 deaths by day 100.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 analysis counts 241 million users worldwide, concentrated in south Asia, with a rising burden of stroke and oral cancer even as prevalence has barely moved.
An IARC worldwide incidence analysis puts the infection-attributable share at 12%, led by H pylori and HPV, with eastern Asia carrying the heaviest load and most of the toll preventable.
A peer-reviewed national analysis puts a figure on this spring's resurgence: 8,834 laboratory-confirmed cases, more than 70% of patients hospitalised, and incidence highest in Dhaka division.
A phase 2b trial in 4936 Gambian children missed its primary endpoint, but ETVAX cut moderate-to-severe ETEC diarrhoea by 80.6% once parasite co-infections were excluded.
In the pragmatic BEAT Tuberculosis trial, an all-oral six-month regimen cured 86.1% of patients with rifampicin-resistant TB — statistically non-inferior to the nine-month standard, with similar safety.
A national cohort of 3,584,203 people found that 96.4% of those re-tested still had a viral load below 1000 copies per mL a year later — the threshold at which HIV is not transmitted sexually.
A meta-analysis of 247 studies across 41 countries pooled a 15.3% detection rate, rising to 38% in fish and seafood markets and running highest across South-East Asia.
In 643 Indian infants, an adjuvanted dose-sparing IPV with about a quarter of the antigen was non-inferior to standard IPV across all three poliovirus types — a possible answer to supply strain.
A Manaus trial found chloroquine alone let 27% of Plasmodium vivax patients relapse by day 42; dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine cut that to 2.4%. Paired with primaquine, both drugs did well.
WHO's 25 September update logs 1,133 more confirmed cases and 532 more deaths since 11 September, and two new health zones — one bordering South Sudan — widen the outbreak's reach.
In the TB-Speed project, trained nurses produced valid Xpert Ultra results in 99.6% to 100% of child samples and returned hospital results within three hours far more often than laboratories.
A national survey of more than 120,000 children put combined prevalence at 5.4% and heavy-intensity infection below WHO's 1% elimination threshold, after ten years of preventive chemotherapy.
A regional Global Burden of Disease analysis attributes 15.8 million healthy life-years lost in 2023 to high body-mass index, and warns of a 346.3% rise in obesity among the young.
A trial across 24 Zambian clinics found a person-centred care package lifted the share of patients in care a year after a treatment gap from 51.5% to 60.1%, and halved repeat interruptions.
A mixed-methods survey of urban households challenges the assumption that city children are the reached ones, and points to antenatal care and a mother's autonomy as the levers that decide.
Task-sharing therapy to lay community workers is the backbone of WHO's plan for closing the treatment gap. A synthesis of 28 studies asks what the model costs the workers themselves.
Varespladib, given on top of antivenom in a randomised trial in India and the USA, did not beat placebo. But it reached patients seven hours after the bite, and the authors say that timing may be the story.
In the RESPOND randomised trial, guided self-help and remote problem-solving delivered by non-professionals cut anxiety and depression scores well below usual care at follow-up.
Drawing on households across every province and region, researchers estimate a stillbirth rate of 30.5 per 1,000 births and a maternal mortality ratio of 176 per 100,000 — both above national and 2030 targets.
A review of the Africa CDC and WHO response reports 49,803 confirmed cases and 240 deaths across 28 countries, US$977 million mobilised, and just 32% of 3.1 million delivered vaccine doses administered.
Two WHO-endorsed shots are now available, but a new analysis argues the harder problem is financing them in the lowest-income, highest-burden countries. Nigerian rollout data shows demand outpacing readiness.
Measles incidence edged up and rubella more than doubled across 22 countries in 2023–2024, with outbreaks in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan driving the trend as second-dose coverage stalled.
A run of CDC sole-source awards in August 2026 sends millions directly to the health ministries of Ethiopia, Zambia and Ukraine — a bet on host-government ownership of the HIV response by 2030.
A PAHO systematic analysis of WHO estimates finds injury rates falling in most of the region but violence and drowning still splitting countries apart, with men carrying nearly three-quarters of the burden.
The Global Burden of Disease 2023 study estimates 2.33 billion NCD incident cases and 263 million DALYs across Africa, with high blood pressure the single largest driver of the continent's NCD deaths.
A Lancet Global Health model projects that barring women from nursing and midwifery training could cut maternal care-seeking to a third of current levels and raise the maternal mortality ratio 29% to 41% by 2035.
Across 41 hospitals in 19 Asian countries, ACORN-HAI found 73.7% of severe bloodstream and ventilator infections were drug-resistant, and 37.7% of those patients died within 28 days.
A new model built on rare donor-transmitted infections estimates China detected 29% and the United States 6% of their rabies deaths, implying hundreds go uncounted each year even where the disease seems rare.
In the TESEO trial, benznidazole for 30 days matched the 60-day standard for clearing the parasite and caused fewer side effects, pointing to a gentler regimen for a neglected disease.
Analysing 32,294 viral sequences from 16,428 people, Swiss researchers found 23 fast-growing clusters drove a third of recent transmission growth — evidence molecular surveillance could target the remaining chains.
An observational study across four DR Congo outbreak sites estimates that a third of positive mpox PCR results reflect environmental viral DNA, not infection — and that a stricter cutoff fixes most of it.
A study of 46 pathogens attributes about 66,400 child deaths in 2023 to Streptococcus pneumoniae across G20 countries, with the heaviest load falling on India, South Africa and Indonesia.
As RTS,S reached more than 2 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, a WHO-coordinated pilot trained about 6,000 health workers to detect and report side-effects that most rollouts assume can already be caught.
In the LATA trial across four countries, 0.9% of teens on long-acting cabotegravir–rilpivirine lost viral suppression by 96 weeks, versus 6.4% on daily tablets — a superiority result.
In surveys of internally displaced Haitians, 57.2% reported severe PTSD symptoms and 68.3% clinically significant depression. Community violence was the strongest correlate; resilience helped only at the margins.
A modelling study finds South Africa's selective birth-dose policy is efficient per infection averted, but giving every newborn a dose would prevent the most disease and be the most cost-effective overall.
By 2023, 22% of children in Mali and 16% in Chad had received no routine vaccine at all, an analysis of WHO figures found, with measles coverage stuck below 90% across most of the belt.
A national analysis of 2020–2025 surveillance found a case fatality rate of 15.5% that never improved, a season tied to heat and rainfall, and a falling share of suspected cases ever confirmed.
A pooled analysis of 315,403 adults finds wealth inequalities in hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol care grow across the care cascade — but the biggest treatment gaps are not where most heart risk could be averted.
In one civilian-hospital series, 84.6% of wound isolates were multidrug-resistant; in a military cohort, 60% of Pseudomonas isolates were extensively drug-resistant. The war is also a resistance event.
A 2026 review reports more than 70 health facilities destroyed in North Kivu, 7.3 million people displaced and over 2 million children acutely malnourished, as conflict compounds overlapping outbreaks.
Bangladesh was validated in 2023 as the first country to eliminate visceral leishmaniasis as a public health problem; India is nearing the same threshold, even as post-kala-azar skin cases climb.
External validation of the PAANTHER decision algorithm in 277 children across four African countries recorded 93.3% negative predictive value and 97.4% sensitivity against a composite reference standard.
Fighting after the 2021 coup concentrated where hospital access was already worst. The population living with both poor access and intense conflict rose from 0.4 to 3.1 million in three years.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 study counts 1,102,794 incident tracheal, bronchus and lung cancers in Asians aged 60 and over in 2023, with ageing populations set to sustain the burden even as rates fall.
A modelling study of 93 household surveys corrects for the chronic underreporting that hides stillbirths, and finds steady but socially unequal declines in perinatal mortality since 1990.
A survey of 1,042 people in the Syrian city found high prices the leading barrier, and more than half said they knew of deaths they attributed to medication shortages.
A meta-analysis of 56 trials and 134,424 children finds RTS,S and R21 cut clinical malaria by about a third overall, with efficacy strongest alongside seasonal chemoprevention and waning after 36 months.
WHO flagged a drifted A(H3N2) subclade K in December; the first 2025-2026 effectiveness data, from 1.4 million US veterans, put overall protection near 22% and protection against hospitalisation near 32%.
Trials show both new vaccines raise protective antibody levels in almost everyone. The unsettled question is the live-attenuated shot's safety in the older adults most likely to be hospitalised.
A cohort at Kilifi County Hospital found RSV pneumonia killed 2.4% of admitted infants across 25 seasons, with no decline; severe undernutrition and congenital heart disease marked the highest risk.
A 1,784-child randomised trial in Uganda found one-fifth and one-half doses of the 17DD vaccine matched the full dose for initial immunity — evidence for dose-sparing in young children when supplies run short.
A descriptive study using WHO modelled estimates for 2022 put current cigarette use between 1.7% in Ghana and 18.2% in Seychelles, with the male-female gap reaching 36.4 points in Lesotho.
The vaccines and antibody drugs that cut Ebola's death rate work against the Zaire species. None is approved for the Bundibugyo virus now driving the largest Ebola outbreak in Congo's history.
New guidelines set how the program, launched in July 2025, screens people aged 50 to 70 with a 30 pack-year smoking history using two-yearly low-dose CT scans.
A vaccine given in 2017 still cut cholera risk 78% five years on, new data show — even as collapsing water and health services let the outbreak spread through Artibonite and Centre.
WHO's 10 September update records 963 more confirmed cases and 481 more deaths in the DRC since late August, with the case fatality ratio holding near 48%.
The prequalification is about delivery, not efficacy: a cheaper, multi-dose presentation of RSVpreF meant to make large-scale rollout feasible where almost all RSV deaths occur.
A Global Burden of Disease 2021 analysis of 5-to-9-year-olds finds falling disability rates worldwide, yet projects that South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will still carry the heaviest load.
A trial in India found calling tuberculosis survivors was non-inferior to visiting them, on a combined measure. Split into survivors and their contacts, the picture reverses for the group at highest risk.
A six-month regimen for drug-resistant tuberculosis matched the standard of care in South Africa. Four days of antibiotics matched eight in African children hospitalised with severe pneumonia.
Human cases are a rounding error against the 3.5 million of the 1980s. But 684 animal infections, most of them dogs in Chad, now stand between the programme and eradication.
4CMenB had shown promise against gonorrhoea in observational data. Randomised, its efficacy was minus 0.5%. In the same field, a once-weekly oral HIV regimen met non-inferiority at 48 weeks.
A WHO data-set analysis shows how mobile and hospital teams split the load of hypertension, diabetes and epilepsy care during the war, while a separate study tracked dialysis capacity falling.
The more contagious a disease, the more of a population must be immune to stop it spreading. Measles sets the bar near 95%. It is not one figure but a range that depends on where you are.
The honest position is two things at once: the current risk to the general public is low, and the reason it is watched so closely is that its worst-case potential is high. The gap between the two is the whole story.
A single infusion of a pan-serotype monoclonal antibody cut viraemia and shortened fever in a 250-patient phase 2 trial in India — the first therapy to show preliminary efficacy against wild-type dengue in people.
A GBD analysis linked 0.84 million under-five deaths in 2021 to antimicrobial resistance, and directly attributed 0.19 million — declining since 1990 but heaviest in sub-Saharan Africa.
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.
A meta-analysis of 28 studies and 684,065 people links intimate partner violence to raised odds of neonatal, infant and under-5 death — the association strongest for sexual violence.
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%.
Across 166,390 tests during Brazil's outbreak, two TAK-003 doses were 73% effective against symptomatic dengue and 88% against hospitalisation, with no sign of waning.
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 modelling study estimates near-universal kangaroo care would avert 1.6 million disability-adjusted life-years and shield 57,000 households from catastrophic health costs, with most gains among the poorest.
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.
Applying the 2025 AHA/ACC guideline to a Nigerian survey sharply raised the share classified hypertensive versus older criteria, widening the gap between diagnosis and treatment capacity.
One study maps the five barriers that delayed life-saving crush-syndrome care; another finds the long-term health burden of the disaster fell hardest on young women.
Tungiasis, on WHO's neglected-disease list since 2021 but never quantified, costs up to 379,645 healthy life-years a year — rising to 575,298 once its complications are counted.
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.
National surveys show risk behaviours climbing among adults with diabetes since 2007, while a separate study finds noncommunicable-disease mortality nearly twice as high in the worst-affected province as in the best.
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.
National surveillance shows no decline from 2020 to 2024, with one in five patients already disabled at diagnosis — a marker of late detection even as the global burden falls.
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.
Papers in WHO EMRO's journal document multidrug-resistant hospital infections in Saudi Arabia, unaffordable injectable antibiotics in Iran, and antibiotic use without prescription in displaced Syrians.
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.
Peer-reviewed work in 2026 argues the effects reach past medicine shortages into financing, procurement, workforce and continuity of care — and frames the finding as association, not proof of cause.
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 prospective study of 660 Syrian refugees living with noncommunicable diseases found symptom burden peaked in the hottest, dustiest period — with asthma and hypertension carrying the highest risk.
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.
Adult TB incidence and mortality are projected to fall 46% and 54% by 2030, short of the 80% and 90% goals. Wider symptom-driven testing matters most to closing the gap, the analysis suggests.
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.
ACT-South Asia randomised 1,847 patients in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Treatment failed in 5.1% of each group — no benefit from the second antibiotic, and a point in favour of stewardship.
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.
A cluster-randomised trial in Cúcuta coated water containers in 13,803 homes. Dengue incidence fell to 337 per 100,000 versus 528 in control clusters, at about US$2 per household a year.
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.
Surveillance data show reported measles cases from Tigray collapsed during the 2020–2022 war; afterward the median age of infection fell to five years and the odds a case was unvaccinated stayed sharply raised.
A case-control study by MSF's Epicentre and WHO put NmCV-5's adjusted effectiveness at 92% against meningococcal meningitis after 2024 campaigns in Niger — on a small sample of 17 confirmed cases.
A rare multicentre record from three Sudanese trauma centres finds penetrating injury in more than nine of ten patients, and civilians in the great majority.
In 2,414 children, the MODAM-MAM trial found one daily sachet of therapeutic food non-inferior to standard supplementary food; two sachets did marginally better but used far more product.
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.
Pooling the trials, one- and two-dose HPV schedules produced lower antibody titres than three doses but still cut persistent infection — with the usual caveat about surrogate endpoints.
A community study of 2,340 residents, run after the conflict that wrecked the region's health system, found presumptive tuberculosis above 10% in both town and countryside.
A cross-sectional study of 96 war amputees, 53 caregivers and 95 community controls found sharply elevated disability and psychiatric symptoms, and argued for combined physical and mental-health rehabilitation.
A cluster-randomised trial in Saponé found seasonal chemoprevention given to children up to age 10 nearly halved parasite carriage in 5-to-9-year-olds, though supervised delivery brought no clear gain under age five.
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.
In the first humanitarian trial of its kind, 400 refugees and hosts were randomised. AUDIT scores fell 4.6 points more with screening and brief intervention than with usual care at six months.
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.
WHO and UNICEF estimates put DTP3 coverage at 85% for a second year running. Yellow fever protection sits at 53% in at-risk countries and HPV at 33% in girls, both far below target.
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.
A peer-reviewed account traces the mass screening and tsetse-fly control that cut gambiense sleeping sickness below one case per 10,000 in endemic areas — the threshold WHO validated in January 2025.
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.
An all-oral short regimen, its length set by chest-imaging severity, was non-inferior to 18-month treatment and caused fewer serious adverse events in a Chinese randomised trial.
Across 84,348 hospital admissions, 19.8% of children had severe anaemia; as malaria receded the burden moved to older children, and severe anaemia doubled the odds of dying.
A WHO global update logged 79 human infections in the Americas and 16 confirmed cases in Africa by late May, with the virus surfacing in areas long considered free of it.
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.
A Bulletin of the WHO study recorded 168 maternal deaths between October 2023 and June 2024, alongside higher stillbirth, neonatal-death and preterm-birth rates than before the war.
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.
Two peer-reviewed studies chart the toll: among 122 Khartoum dialysis patients followed for up to 18 months, 53% survived, and those who stayed in the capital fared worst.
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.
A 23-year genetic-network analysis of 5,094 cases identified 107 molecular super-spreaders, mostly men aged 50-69, with 94.4% living within 2 km of major transport routes.
In a 122-patient South African proof-of-concept study, a four-month all-oral combination of quabodepistat, delamanid and bedaquiline cleared TB from sputum as often as the six-month standard.
A national database of ~90% of public facilities found all-cause diarrhoea incidence in under-fives dropped 50% and hospitalisations 58% after 2020, with no rise in intussusception.
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.
An all-oral, bedaquiline-based programme treated 277 patients through six years of conflict in eastern Congo and reached 77.6% treatment success — above WHO's 75% mark — but mortality stayed at 13.4%.
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.
Global Burden of Disease data show prevalent traumatic brain injury cases in people aged 15-49 rose from 12.53 million in 1990 to 14.99 million in 2021, even as age-standardised rates fell.
The patient had spent months in Senegal and was found to carry the poultry-adapted virus alongside tuberculosis. WHO rates the public risk as low and traced no onward spread.
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.
Two doses of the long-acting antibody L9LS protected under-fives in a high-transmission area, but researchers say a higher dose is likely needed for stronger cover.
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 AVENIR trial met its resistance endpoint in the gut but not the nose: giving the antibiotic to under-fives lifted macrolide resistance 16% above placebo communities.
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.
The surveillance behind the WHO-verified milestone is now published: no infective blackflies at any monitored site, and no infection among 16,406 children tested.
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.
A test-negative study found the TYPHIBEV conjugate vaccine 89% effective against confirmed typhoid in Nepali children over 30 months, with weaker and far less certain protection under age five.
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.
In a 20,000-child trial across eight endemic countries, TAK-003 was 61.2% effective against symptomatic dengue and 84.1% against hospitalisation — but protection was narrower in children never previously infected.
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 Eighth Replenishment closed at US$12.64 billion against the US$18 billion its own Investment Case tied to 23 million lives saved and 400 million infections prevented by 2029.
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.
WHO and CDC estimate cases climbed about 20% in a single year, and the number of countries hit by large or disruptive outbreaks jumped from 36 to 57 — while global first-dose coverage stayed flat.
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.
About 260,000 women died in pregnancy or childbirth in 2023; 37 conflict-affected or fragile countries accounted for 61% of those deaths while holding only a quarter of the world's births.
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.
WHO's World malaria report counts 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths for 2024. The US$3.9 billion spent was under half the US$9.3 billion the global strategy called for.
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.
The 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations took effect in September 2025, adding a 'pandemic emergency' tier. The United States formally rejected them.
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.
Five cutaneous anthrax cases, one fatal, were confirmed in Mukdahan province in May 2025, all tied to the home slaughter of infected cows — a textbook zoonotic spillover.
Two healthy children in Lae tested positive for cVDPV2 genetically linked to an Indonesian outbreak, in a country where coverage for a third oral polio dose was 44% in 2024.
The final analysis of a 28,130-child trial found roughly 78% efficacy over more than four years, evidence that underpins WHO's push to roll the conjugate vaccine out in endemic countries.