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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…
Human-caused warming hit 1.37°C in 2025 and is rising at the fastest rate ever recorded, scientists warned at UN climate talks in Bonn, putting the world on track to cross the Paris Agreement’s warming limit by the end of the decade. The world will permanently breach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit within about four years if emissions continue at current levels, a major global stocktake of the climate system published Thursday has found. The fourth annual Indicators of Global Climate Change report, published at the UN climate meetings in Bonn as negotiators begin to lay the groundwork for COP31, shows…
The Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit was designed to offer Medicare beneficiaries the choice of drug coverage from either stand-alone prescription drug plans (PDPs) for people in traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans (MA-PDs) that offer both medical and drug benefits, with plans competing on premiums, coverage, and cost sharing. Increasingly, however, PDPs and MA-PDs are competing on uneven terms, in part because the payment system for Medicare Advantage plans enables MA-PDs to lower Part D premiums or reduce Part D cost sharing, making drug coverage from Medicare Advantage plans appear considerably cheaper, or even premium-free, to…
The average monthly premium decreased for PDPs in 2026, but the premium for Part D coverage is still substantially higher for PDPs than for MA-PDs The temporary Part D premium stabilization demonstration for stand-alone PDPs established by the Biden administration in 2024 and renewed for a second year by the Trump administration in 2025 continues to work as intended to help stabilize PDP premiums, with the average monthly PDP premium decreasing 7% between 2025 and 2026, from $39 to $36. This is despite monthly premium increases in some PDPs of up to $50, the maximum increase allowed in 2026 for…
EU climate monitor Copernicus maps highlight severe extreme weather and heatwaves across Europe in May 2026. Following a severe May heatwave, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued new global guidelines on Thursday in Berlin to accelerate climate adaptation and structurally overhaul health systems and urban spaces. Over the past four years, extreme heat has claimed more than 200,000 lives across Europe, positioning it as the deadliest climate-related hazard. As new climate data reveals, global warming was pushed to 1.37°C above pre-industrial levels in 2025 – and is expected to breach the critical 1.5°C threshold within four years. WHO estimates the…
‘Groundbreaking’ NHS teams that have freed up thousands of hospital beds, accelerated cancer diagnosis, and transformed care for patients have been recognised at the inaugural 2026 NHS Excellence Awards. Held today at NHS ConfedExpo in Manchester, the awards celebrated some of the most innovative and impactful healthcare initiatives from across England, showcasing how frontline staff are delivering better outcomes for patients while helping the NHS meet growing demand. This year’s winners include a new virtual ward from the Medway Foundation Trust, which freed up nearly 5,000 beds while maintaining low readmission rates. While the Marie Curie Responsive Emergency Assessment and…
A&Es experienced their busiest month on record in May, as last month’s heatwave piled pressure on NHS services. The NHS managed 2,457,398 attendances in A&E during May – up 25,000 on the previous record set in March earlier this year – according to newly published NHS data. The figures mean the NHS has now seen two record-breaking months for A&E demand in 2026. Ambulance services were also under intense pressure, with paramedics experiencing their third busiest month ever – and demand at levels never seen outside of winter – after handling 832,089 incidents in May. Despite the unprecedented demand, 1.86…
Highlights Two recent federal actions, including a memo about alleged COVID-19 vaccine deaths and settlements creating a “detransition clinic,” show how official actions can present uncertain or uncommon outcomes as representative and lend credibility to narratives that go beyond what evidence supports. Recent Developments Official Actions Elevate Uncertain or Uncommon Outcomes in Debates Over Vaccine Safety and Gender-Affirming Care Official actions can elevate unverified or uncommon outcomes in ways that shape public perceptions beyond what evidence suggests. Two developments show how such actions can lend weight to narratives not borne out by evidence, one by overstating a causal link not…
President Donald Trump, who once declared he had “saved” flavored vapes, grew his stock holdings this year to as much as $1.64 million in tobacco giant Philip Morris. He also had holdings in Altria and a third leading tobacco company, though an apparent discrepancy in his disclosures clouds the extent of his investments. In 2025, tobacco interests donated $6 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports the president, and Trump’s inauguration. And, on April 30, a week before FDA guidance that provided a critical boost to the industry, Reynolds American dropped an additional $5 million into the super…