For how we live.
Outbreaks, health systems, and policy across South, Southeast, and East Asia.
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.
Among 93,406 children in Japan's national birth cohort, preterm birth was linked to higher odds of thinness at ages 4 to 6 and persistently lower BMI from 3 to 6, with no sign of catch-up.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
In half a million Chinese adults, higher exhaled carbon monoxide tracked with lower Parkinson's risk even among people who never smoked. It is an association, not a therapy.
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 five-year panel study found sales of mental-disorder medicines rose 144% in a cyclone's landfall year and 173% the next in coastal districts, with no measurable effect further inland.
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.
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.
Among 3,032 couples sampled before conception, higher maternal and paternal vitamin B12 both tracked with lower predicted birth-defect prevalence. The paternal pattern was weaker, and this is observational.
A Shanghai study of 3,032 couples measured nutrients before conception. Predicted birth-defect prevalence fell across maternal B12 levels — and, more weakly, across paternal ones.
The association was strongest where the air was worst — which is the tell. A parallel US survey finds the indoor facilities are the ones vanishing from low-income neighbourhoods.
In 4,868 clozapine users followed to 2023, excess neutropenia risk concentrated in the first 18 weeks and converged with other antipsychotics by around two years.
In 2,292 hip fractures across six cities in Nagano, snowfall raised the odds of admission — until the models adjusted for how cold it was, at which point the association disappeared.
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.
In 555,904 matched adults, screening endoscopy cut gastric cancer mortality in the 50s and 60s. Past 80, or with heavy comorbidity, the association reversed.
Two national survey analyses find schedule unpredictability — not shift work itself — associated with insomnia symptoms, with a dose-response by how much advance notice a worker gets.
A comparison of 2020–2025 approvals finds 94 novel oncology drugs from the NMPA against 87 from the FDA, with China's volume overtaking from 2023. The speed and first-in-class figures run the other way.
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.
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.
A quasi-experimental analysis of 23 hospitals finds about 95 additional self-harm and suicide-related emergency visits a month after the law changed, alongside fewer psychiatric admissions.
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.
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.
Extremely dense breasts on a routine screening mammogram were linked to a 20% lower likelihood of menopause over the following years, a possible marker of reproductive aging.
Twenty-two years of national data show income-related inequities in care use narrowing, and copayment increases for higher earners not reversing that. Services carrying extra user charges are the outlier.
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.
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.
A national case-crossover study of 236,260 chronic kidney disease deaths finds women, over-65s and people in cooler regions most affected — and projects the burden nearly quadrupling by the 2090s.
An 8-year-old boy had brain inflammation with no respiratory symptoms. Every respiratory, blood and rectal sample tested negative; the virus was in his cerebrospinal fluid alone.
An age-period-cohort analysis across five registries finds annual increases of 5.3% in Korea and 3.8% in Japan, against 1.6% among Japanese Americans and flat or falling rates in US White women.
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 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.
A six-year cohort study using Japan's long-term care records found a roughly 25% lower risk. The design cannot separate cooking from the ability to cook.
A new audit of China's regulatory record finds a market concentrated in radiology, dominated by deep learning, and clustered in four cities. It also finds the approval curve flattening.
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.
A cluster-randomised trial across 15 population clusters found mosquito abundance collapsed in intervention areas and protective efficacy of 71–72% against symptomatic dengue.
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.
A trial across five Chinese hospitals found remote robotic urological surgery non-inferior to local surgery. The sample is small, the surgeons were experts, and the network never failed.
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.
Emergency restrictions came into force on 13 December when the index passed 450. The more telling number is how many days the city has now spent in a category that was meant to be exceptional.
Floods and landslides in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand have killed more people in a fortnight than most single climate events on record. The second wave — water, food, medicine — is the part that lasts.
A 43-year analysis at hourly resolution finds a 3.3% rise in average heat stress exposure duration across districts, with the change varying by time of day, season and region.
SURPASS-CN-INS randomised 257 adults at 26 Chinese hospitals. The 10 mg and 15 mg doses performed almost identically against placebo, and diarrhoea affected roughly a third of those on the higher doses.
Physicians editing AI drafts wrote better notes than they did unaided, and worse notes than the AI produced alone. Both directions of that result matter.
A national insurance-claims analysis found long-term adherence far below what trial populations suggest, despite universal coverage and strict usage monitoring. The monitoring may be part of the problem.
Two Nature papers describe the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative and the risk scores built from it. The genetic effects identified explained up to 10.3% of health variation in the cohort.
A 47-prefecture analysis of a decade of heatstroke mortality finds the alert level set at 33C misses almost all of the deaths a warning could plausibly prevent. About 31C would halve them.
BCG and oral polio vaccine given within 48 hours to 5,420 babies under 2,000 g reduced deaths from infections other than tuberculosis. The effect is off-target, and the mechanism is unresolved.
Twenty untrained women cycled at four fixed workloads wearing four popular low-cost bands, checked against indirect calorimetry. Every device drifted further from the truth as effort rose.
A pooled analysis of 72,776 Korean adults found an 11% higher type 2 diabetes risk in the top intake quartile. An updated meta-analysis of 17 cohorts put the dose-response at 10% per 10% of intake.
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.
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.
Singapore General Hospital randomised residents to work with and without an LLM assistant. Documentation time fell by 1.82 minutes, which was not significant. The economic model used the point estimates anyway.
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.
Deaths during combined heat and ozone days in Hong Kong, preterm births projected across Chinese cities to 2100, and a seasonal flip in Japan's ambulance demand from winter to summer.
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.