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“It wasn’t unusual for shells and missiles to smash through the upper floors, leaving sizeable holes. Every time we were hit, we’d wonder if we should close the hospital.” That is how Dr. Amani Ballour, a Syrian paediatrician and the first female director of a hospital in a Syrian war zone, recalls working in an underground medical facility during the Syrian civil war. Yet despite repeated attacks, “the people kept coming, and we kept working. We never did close the cave.” Speaking on the Global Health Matters “Dialogues” podcast, Ballour described six years spent treating civilians under siege in Eastern…
“Those are people who are being killed socially.” That is how Dr. Marcus Lacerda, one of the world’s leading malaria researchers, describes children whose futures are shaped by repeated bouts of vivax malaria. Lacerda, who joined TDR as Director in March 2026, has spent more than 25 years studying infectious diseases in the Brazilian Amazon. He is perhaps best known as a driving force behind tafenoquine, the first single-dose radical cure for Plasmodium vivax malaria approved in four decades. Speaking on the latest episode of Trailblazers with Garry, hosted by Dr. Garry Aslanyan, Lacerda reflected on the experiences that…
The Panchachuli peaks, part of the Himalaya range between India and Nepal. Home to 1 in 4 people globally, the region should brace for “multi-hazards” and poor air quality apart from heat and water stress, according to a new report. The authors called on countries in the fractious neighbourhood to cooperate on data and form common solutions. The monsoon season this year is likely to bring more water and heat stress, rather than relief, to South Asia, home to over two billion people – a quarter of the world’s population. This preliminary assessment comes from the Hindu Kush Himalaya Monsoon…
KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s position on antidepressants on WAMU’s 1A on June 10. KFF Health News journalist Rae Ellen Bichell discussed, on WBUR’s Here & Now on June 10, a recent investigation that found immigration facilities aren’t providing adequate medical care. KFF Health News national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen discussed the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show on June 9. Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed on Fox’s LiveNow on June 8 how…
Industrial action by resident doctors will be taking place from 7am on Monday 15 June to 6:59am Friday 19 June 2026. This four-day strike coincides with more expected hot weather and the start of the football World Cup, with millions turning out to watch England’s first match against Croatia on Wednesday. The NHS’s top doctor is reminding those who need care to come forward amid rising pressure expected next week. While hotter temperatures could see more people seeking emergency care, hospitals across the country have been working around the clock to minimise disruption and keep patients safe during this period of…
The issue of affordability has reignited a long-simmering battle between California’s medical industry and one of its largest health worker unions. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, with approximately 120,000 members, has put forward two ballot initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require community clinics to spend the vast bulk of their revenues on patient care. The California Hospital Association has responded with its own ballot proposal that would make it tougher for unions to spend money on future political initiatives by requiring a union’s rank-and-file membership to approve any spending of at least $1 million on statewide measures…
Prevention programmes have borne the biggest brunt of the cuts, while The number of people receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) at least once in the year fell 38% between 2024 and 2025, the report shows. The global HIV response is facing its “biggest storm” since the world united against the epidemic, UNAIDS warned Friday, as it published new data showing donor funding for HIV/AID prevention and community services critical to containing infections dropped by almost one quarter last year. The Global AIDS Brief is being published just 10 days ahead of the United Nations High-Level Meeting (HLM) in New York City,…
When Congress allowed covid-era subsidies for health insurance to expire, California used its own funds to offset the hike in Obamacare premium costs for residents with low incomes. But the reach has been limited. As Gov. Gavin Newsom negotiates his last budget with the legislature, the Democrat wants to offer financial help to more than 1 in 4 enrollees in Covered California, the nation’s largest state-run health insurance marketplace. Democratic lawmakers, who hold a supermajority, are still debating the plan. “My budget proposal would KEEP $0 monthly plans for low-income Californians to help clean up the financial disaster Trump created,”…
The blood collection drape, an inexpensive plastic sheet with a pouch at its base that hangs off the end of the delivery table and collects and measures blood lost by women during and after labour. Every year, around 27 million women bleed excessively after giving birth, and almost 43,000 die – yet there are new ways for this to be detected and treated. This is according to a series on maternal health published in The Lancet on Friday by the United Nations Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and…
The Trump administration has issued final rules on how states should ensure that millions of Medicaid enrollees prove they’re working or completing other activities, such as job training, volunteering, or being enrolled in an educational program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the rules on June 1. That deadline was set last year in the GOP tax-and-spending law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which established a work requirement for certain people enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities. Medicaid agencies are scrambling to rework IT systems and…
Dr Wahome Ngare, who accused the Gates Foundation and CEPI of ‘genocide’. Ghana’s parliament invited a vociferously anti-vaccine Kenyan and a conservative Dutch activist campaigning to curtail the World Health Organization (WHO) to address visiting MPs on “health sovereignty” last week. Ghanaian President John Mahama – who is championing African “health sovereignty” via an initiative called the Accra Reset – was a keynote speaker at the WHO’s World Health Assembly last month, and is drumming up international support for the initiative. Yet Ghanaian Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin, a leader in Mahama’s National Democratic Congress, hosted Dr Wahome Ngare and…
Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions, January 20, 2025PURPOSE: Initial rescissions of Executive Orders and Actions issued by President Biden. Among these orders are several that addressed the COVID-19 pandemic and global health security, such as Executive Order 13987 (Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government To Provide a Unified and Effective Response To Combat COVID-19 and To Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security), which among other things established the National Security Council Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense and a Senior Director position to oversee it.What Happens Next/Implications: Given that most of the…
Starting on his first day of his second term in office, President Trump and his administration have taken several executive actions that directly impact U.S. global health efforts. This timeline, which is a companion resource to components of KFF’s Overview of President Trump’s Executive Actions on Global Health, provides a detailed overview of actions, including counter-actions, related to the administration’s efforts to freeze all U.S. foreign aid, dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which implements most U.S. global health programs, and reorganize the Department of State. It will be updated as needed to reflect additional developments. Global Health…
Dr Jean Kaseya addresses the media briefing. Only around 12% of the contacts of Ebola patients in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been reached, posing a “huge risk” for community transmission, Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told a media briefing on Thursday. Ituri is the epicentre of the current outbreak, accounting for 600 of the 635 confirmed cases by 9 June. Around 4,955 contacts have been recorded, but Kaseya said that in high-density urban areas, such as the mining towns in Ituri, each patient would have been…
For the first time since the enhanced premium tax credits were introduced in 2021, insurer participation in the ACA Marketplaces has gone down. This drop follows the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits at the end of 2025 and is primarily driven by the exit of Aetna CVS from 17 states as well as exits from other insurers. While the average number of insurers per state offering plans in the Marketplaces in 2026 is lower than in the years after the enhanced premium tax credits were established, more insurers are now offering plans than were before the enhanced tax…
As of June 8, 2026, six carriers have announced that they will exit the ACA Marketplaces in plan year 2027, either in some or all states that they are currently offering plans: Cigna Health, CareSource, PacificSource, Scott and White, Providence Health, and Taro Health. These insurer exits, expected to impact roughly a third of states, follow the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits at the end of 2025, which drove sign-ups to fall by over a million from the 2025 to 2026 Open Enrollment Periods—with further membership declines in the ACA Marketplaces expected as the year progresses. ACA Marketplace…