On that sunny March morning, in a small health center in Lobamba, a rural area of Eswatini, this 32-year-old sex worker has just become one of the first people in the world to receive lenacapavir, a drug that, administered twice a year, offers nearly 100% protection against HIV.
Kelly Chibale describes the drug discovery process as a fairy-tale quest, stating, 'It doesn't mean that there aren't surprises or miracles. They do happen, but you have to kiss many frogs before you meet the prince.' This metaphor illustrates the challenges and unpredictability in finding effective medicines.
I am open-minded; I believe in integrative practices, and I agree that the medical establishment can be arrogant and unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, which now funds so much of medical research. But I fully understand Scherer's frustration with his interminable discussions with Kennedy about scientific articles.
Speaking from working right now in the middle of our flu season, where we haven't been able to handle a surge in acute care need anywhere in Canada it seems, I would be concerned going forward about having a surge in need for hospital resources, said Varner, CMAJ's deputy editor and an emergency doctor in downtown Toronto, in an interview with CBC News.
Risks of outbreaks with pandemic potential rise with increasing land-use change, biodiversity loss and climate change. The Pandemic Agreement adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2025 marks a historic shift that establishes the One Health approach as a legally binding obligation for pandemic prevention.
Laboratories turned to a smart workaround when COVID‑19 testing kits became scarce in 2020. They mixed samples from several patients and ran a single test. If the test came back negative, everyone in it was cleared at once. If it was positive, follow-up tests would zero in on who was infected. That strategy, known as group testing, saved valuable time, money, and resources.
In his first email to CDC staff, he wrote that the federal government's "decisions, communications, and processes" broke the public's trust during the pandemic, and that "acknowledging this reality is a necessary step toward renewal." In practice, the CDC has been undergoing a kind of forced renewal for months.
Each day, they pore over reams of data about how the virus is evolving worldwide, how well last year's shot performed, and which strains might be easiest to mass produce for a vaccine. The meeting, convened by the World Health Organization twice a year, is a critical moment for the WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
The World Health Organization announced in late January that six European countries: the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had all officially lost their measles elimination status, which means the virus has been circulating continuously in those countries for more than 12 months.
Perhaps the most significant milestone was the adoption by WHO Member States of the Pandemic Agreement, a landmark step towards making the world safer from future pandemics. Alongside this, amendments to the International Health Regulations came into force, including a new pandemic emergency alert level designed to trigger stronger global cooperation. And to sustainably finance the WHO's work, governments in a historic show of support increased their contributions to our core budget.
There is little doubt that this is what African countries need if they are serious about universal health coverage - ensuring that every member of their populations has access to this fundamental human right. But such an approach has never been implemented in Africa. Some of the reasons for this are outlined in a report on health financing by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the continent's public-health agency based in Addis Ababa, published last week (see go.nature.com/3o9wxfc).
CITYWIDE- NYC HEALTH + HOSPITALS/BELLEVUE, IN PREPARING FOR THE U.S. HOSTING THE WORLD CUP SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIPS THIS YEAR, has trained close to 500 health care and public health professionals to respond to high-consequence infectious disease threats. The city's public hospital system announced on Tuesday, Jan. 27, that during 2025, the health care professionals were trained across four jurisdictions encompassing New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Half a world away, specialists in Japan say they have some hard-won wisdom to offer. They watched flu and pneumonia deaths spike after the Japanese government stopped pushing parents to have their children vaccinated against influenza. They witnessed rubella outbreaks driven by shifting vaccine guidance that left a segment of the population vulnerable. And they saw an unfounded media scare turn the public away from immunizations against human papillomavirus (HPV), which is responsible for nearly all cases of cervical cancer.
the research would have followed 14,000 infants in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau. The problem? Only 7,000 of those newborns would have received an urgently needed hepatitis B vaccine, in order to compare the two groups. On top of the flagrant ethics violations, the total cost of the research would have exceeded the cost to pay for "over a decade's worth of Hepatitis B vaccine birth doses [for everyone] in Guinea-Bissau."
We see the percentage of outpatients' visits for influenza-like illnesses (proven influenza cases and not tested but similar cases) in 2025 and the beginning of 2026, compared to the last few years. The current outbreak is represented by a dark red line that is higher than in previous years and is expected to continue rising with the start of school this week.
