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Health Policy InsightTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus makes appeal after protests against protocols for handling victims’ bodies in Ituri province
Containing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo requires community cooperation and is “everybody’s business”, the World Health Organization has said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director general, made the plea on Sunday during a visit to eastern Congo where some residents have protested against stringent medical protocols for handling victims’ bodies.
Continue reading...Serious health conditions are being misdiagnosed and pregnancies are missed while the internet swells with terrible advice and meno-products. Enough!
Ladies! Are you tired all the time, sweaty and hot, or headachy? Do you have a range of the vague complaints (laziness, hysteria, dissolute habits, general languishing) that would have seen you committed to a 19th-century asylum? Are you lacking in joie de vivre? Maybe you’re perimenopausal!
Or maybe you’re not: being tired, hot and over everything are also symptoms of simply being alive in spring 2026. That’s not what the internet wants you to believe, though: last week, experts issued a warning about the deluge of perimenopause and menopause misinformation online and the risks that can pose to women, including unwanted pregnancies and a failure to seek a diagnosis for serious health conditions.
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Continue reading...Researchers say healthcare systems could be overwhelmed by 2050 as global burden of disease continues to rise
The world is facing a cancer workforce crisis, experts have said, with a shortage of 100 million staff expected by 2050 as 100,000 people are diagnosed every day.
Patients could face much longer waits to be diagnosed and treated in future as the global cancer burden continues to rise and threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems, according to a report at the world’s largest oncology conference.
Continue reading...Experts hail daraxonrasib as ‘gamechanger’ for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer
A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger” and one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades.
Currently, there are few treatments for pancreatic cancer, and most do little or nothing to help. For decades, scientists have worked relentlessly trying to find clever solutions for a form of cancer that is often found late. More than half of patients are only diagnosed after it has spread.
Continue reading...Many of those who love spending time in Britain’s green places say it is awe-inspiring, calming and therapeutic
As a recent study revealed almost half of UK adults now spend less than three hours a week in natural settings such as gardens, parks, fields or woods, we asked readers to tell us about what being outside means to them.
The replies – heartfelt and passionate – came flooding in, with some admitting they just did not have the words to say how important it is.
Continue reading...Jab brought ‘unprecedentedly strong responses’ in patients whose disease had become resistant to chemotherapy and immunotherapy
Doctors have hailed “unprecedented” trial results that show a triple-action cancer jab can eradicate entire tumours in patients.
In an international trial spanning 11 countries, the injection was offered to patients whose cancer had spread or come back and whose disease had failed to respond to other treatments.
Continue reading...Results presented at oncology conference in Chicago show Galleri test failed to reduce late-stage cancer diagnoses
A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer that was billed as the holy grail of oncology has failed to achieve its main objective in a major clinical trial, according to data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference.
The goal of the study involving 142,000 NHS patients in the UK was to assess whether adding the multi-cancer early detection test Galleri to standard screening could shift diagnoses to earlier, more treatable stages.
Continue reading...Mothers with PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) explain how it has affected their relationship with their families
Laura Daly was six the first time she suspected something was wrong with her mum, Wendy. Furious at locking herself out of the house, Wendy reversed and rammed the car into their garage door once, twice, then three times, as Laura cowered silently in the back, her head flopping forwards with each smash. On the seventh smash, the garage door contorted just enough for Laura to squeeze under, get into the house and fetch the keys.
“It was like I was watching myself,” Wendy Barker, 56, says of this moment now. “Nothing would’ve stopped me.”
Continue reading...Findings add to growing efforts to explain why cancer rates are increasing among younger adults worldwide
Poor sleep may be fuelling the global rise in under-50s being diagnosed with cancer, two large studies suggest.
The number of younger people diagnosed with the disease has risen by almost 80% in three decades. Worldwide cases of early-onset cancer increased from 1.82m in 1990 to 3.26m in 2019, while cancer deaths among people in their 40s, 30s or younger rose by 27%.
Continue reading...Trial suggests patients with a low test score could be treated with hormone therapy alone with near-identical outcomes
Millions of women with breast cancer could be spared chemotherapy with a groundbreaking genomic test, according to the results of a trial that could transform healthcare guidelines worldwide.
Treatment for breast cancer, the world’s most prevalent form of the disease, involves surgery to remove tumours. Chemotherapy is then usually recommended when doctors believe there is a risk the disease will return.
Continue reading...Karen Bonham was part of successful trial for genomic test that determines which women with breast cancer can safely avoid chemotherapy
A landmark study shows millions of women with breast cancer could skip chemotherapy thanks to a genomic test that determines who needs the treatment and who doesn’t.
The randomised international trial specifically looked at whether the test could identify those patients who would not benefit from chemotherapy, and then see if they could safely avoid it.
Continue reading...Bereaved relatives say they were ignored by authorities as they searched for answers over suicide forums and kits
Monday would have been Aimee Walton’s 25th birthday. But in 2022, the lover of music and art from Southampton took her own life after being groomed by another user on an online forum that glorified and enabled suicide. On Friday, 3,500 miles away, the man who sold her a toxic substance pleaded guilty in a Canadian courtroom to his part in 14 other fatal poisonings.
Kenneth Law, 60, is linked to at least 131 deaths worldwide, after using a collection of digital storefronts to target vulnerable youth. Investigators in the province of Ontario say Law shipped more than 1,200 packages – many containing a toxic substance – from his local post office to people in more than 40 countries; the vast majority went to the United Kingdom and the United States.
Continue reading...Americans spend 18% of our economy on healthcare, nearly twice the average of comparable nations, for worse results
The Commonwealth Fund published its 2026 report card on US healthcare this week, measuring the United States against 19 other wealthy countries. It runs the most expensive system on earth, and it buys some of the worst results in the developed world. I have spent more than four decades in the medical intensive care unit at UCLA, and I do not read those numbers as statistics. I read them as the people I admit.
We spend 18% of our economy on healthcare, nearly twice the average of comparable nations, and $12,649 a person, roughly 10 times what Mexico spends. For that fortune, American life expectancy peaked at 79 years, more than two years below our peers and third from the bottom of the group, above only Mexico and Turkey. Our rate of deaths that good care should have prevented is the second worst in the developed world. Only Mexico does worse.
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