Researchers say tobacco linked to about one in eight deaths worldwide and numbers rising sharply in some countries

Exposure to tobacco killed more than 7 million people worldwide in 2023, according to estimates.

It remains the leading risk factor for deaths in men, among whom there were 5.59m deaths, and ranks seventh for women, among whom there were 1.77m deaths.

Health networks in other US cities fear the Ice operations seen in LA will be replicated in their communities

On a Wednesday morning earlier this month, Jane*, the coordinator for a mobile clinic at a temporary housing campus in Downey, just southeast of Los Angeles, was weaving through the line of patients, helping them fill out routine forms.

Everything was normal, she recalled, until she glimpsed, from the corner of her eye, the facility’s security guard whisk away the cone that had been propping open the gate for the clinic, letting it swing shut. What had welcomed care now suddenly threatened capture.

Turn the volume down, don’t use cotton buds and get your hearing tested before it’s too late. Here’s what experts recommend to keep your ears healthy

Hearing loss can make life difficult and lead to social isolation. But with extremely loud devices in our pockets, and earbuds in near-constant use, we are at more risk than ever. How can you take care of your ears to avoid problems?

Their baby’s crying brings on PTSD for Kenny, a former sniper in Afghanistan, and Kerry is beset by her own dark secret. Can love keep them together?

There is never the tiniest doubt that Kerry and Kenny Watson love each other. “I always tell him that he has the most beautiful ears,” says Kerry, marvelling at the wonder of her husband. “Even his wrists are beautiful.” But when Kenny came home to Scotland after serving as a sniper in Afghanistan, it looked as if their marriage was almost certainly over. Diagnosed withpost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Kenny was sleeping between 18 and 24 hours a day, and became so paranoid that he thought dog walkers were Taliban snipers. The worst thing was that the crying of their baby son, Harris, triggered his PTSD. This intimate documentary, told without a scrap of sentimentality, follows the couple over 10 years.

The story unfolds almost like couples therapy, unpeeling the relationship layer by layer. On the voiceover Kenny jokes that when he met Kerry he told her he was a deep-sea firefighter, not a soldier, because he thought the truth would scare her away. What he loved first about his wife was her honesty; but Kerry has never fully opened up to him about a trauma from her childhood. The camera is a fly-on-the-wall in their lives through the worst of Kenny’s illness. In the darkest moments, he is agonisingly, unflinchingly direct about what is going on in his head.

Of course public sector jobs should be properly compensated. But in a society where pay has stagnated, support for more strikes is waning

“Because you’re worth it,” goes the ad. But knowing who is worth what is even harder to determine than it was half a century ago. So as doctors vote in a strike ballot, how will the public weigh up their just reward?

Some 50,000 resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – are deciding whether to walk out again in England. Their year-and-a-half-long series of strikes ended with Wes Streeting agreeing a 22.3% pay rise over two years. Now their seniors, hospital consultants, are about to vote on striking to reclaim the 26% the British Medical Association (BMA) says their pay has fallen by since 2008.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The US health secretary’s latest report is more interested in vaccine scepticism than the brutal toll inflicted by guns and road traffic accidents

“Make America healthy again”. We can all get behind this slogan and agree that much more could be done to improve the health of people living in the US. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health and human services secretary, recently released a report detailing the challenge of the US’s health. About 90% of it outlines the high rates of obesity, mental health issues and chronic disease, 10% covers vaccine scepticism, and 0% looks at solutions or any discussions of the systemic social and economic issues that drive much of the US’s health problems.

But what surprised me more was a notable omission of the two biggest killers of American children. American children aren’t just unhealthier. They’re more likely to die in the first 19 years of life because of guns – both homicides and suicides – or in a road traffic accident than children in comparable countries. How can an entire report be written without mentioning these factors, and how unique the US is in the burden of disability and death they cause?

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Retro-style tourism video fronted by a former All Blacks coach won the Cannes Lions grand prix for good award

A public health advertisement that campaigned to make New Zealand “the best place in the world to have herpes” has won a top prize at the Cannes Lions – one of world’s most prestigious advertising awards.

The campaign, launched by the New Zealand Herpes Foundation in October last year, attempts to challenge decades of entrenched stigma around genital herpes – a condition that affects up to 80% of New Zealanders at some point in their lives, the foundation said.

As heatwaves grip the US, placing millions under advisories, experts describe how to mitigate effects of heat stress

The US is in a record-breaking heatwave, with tens of millions people on alert. A persistent heat dome is blanketing much of the midwest and spanning through the north-east. The phenomenon traps hot air and humidity, and exacerbates the “feels like” temperature to much higher than it actually is.

Health experts and climate scientists described the effects of extreme heat on the human body, which populations are most at risk and ways to mitigate it.

This article was originally published on 29 June 2023

The health secretary deserves praise for trying something new. But links between poor care and overstretched staff must not be avoided

The announcement of a new inquiry into maternity care failures in England, including the shockingly higher risk of mortality faced by black and Asian mothers, indicates an overdue recognition that improvements are needed. From the devastating 2015 review of a decade of failure at Morecambe Bay, to last year’s birth trauma report from MPs, there is no shortage of evidence that women face unacceptable risks when giving birth on the NHS. The question is whether a review chaired by Wes Streeting himself can achieve what previous ones have not.

His role as chair is not the only novel aspect of this inquiry. A panel including bereaved parents will share their experiences and knowledge, alongside expert evidence. This format should focus minds on the human consequences of systemic failures, including mother and baby deaths, and on the need for accountability when things go wrong.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Health secretary launches national inquiry into care of mothers and babies in England, saying there is ‘too much passing the buck’

• UK politics live – latest updates

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has launched a national investigation into NHS maternity services in England, saying that “maternity units are failing, hospitals are failing, trusts are failing, regulators are failing” and there was “too much passing the buck”.

Speaking at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ (RCOG) annual conference on Monday, Streeting said the inquiry would urgently look at the 10 worst-performing services in the country, as well as the entire maternity system.

WHO calls for higher cigarette taxes, plus graphic warnings on vapes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches

Aggressively marketed vapes threaten to undo progress made on smoking control, according to the World Health Organization.

Officials, speaking at the World Conference on Tobacco Control in Dublin, said efforts were stalling when it came to helping tobacco users to quit, campaigning in the media on the dangers, and imposing higher taxes on tobacco products. Young people were particularly vulnerable, it added.

A growing number of abortions happen through telehealth – including for women in states with strict bans

Three years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, erasing the national right to abortion and paving the way for more than a dozen states to ban the procedure, the number of abortions performed in the US is still on the rise – including in some states that ban the procedure.

US abortion providers performed 1.14m abortions in 2024, according to new data released on Monday by #WeCount, a Society of Family Planning project that has tracked abortion provision since 2022. That’s the highest number on record in recent years.

Advocates fear Senate’s version of Trump’s budget bill could leave millions without healthcare and boost corporations

Advocates are urging Senate Republicans to reject a proposal to cut billions from American healthcare to extend tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations.

The proposal would make historic cuts to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people that covers 71 million Americans, and is the Senate version of the “big beautiful bill” act, which contains most of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

The punishing but enduring ‘too posh to push’ fallacy is still prevalent and judgment abounds. This has to change

There was nothing about giving birth that didn’t feel personal, from the agony of my 30-hour induced labour to my eventual journey to the operating theatre where my son was delivered by emergency caesarean section. At that point, I had no idea that I was part of an upward trend in the number of C-sections. Rates of the procedure are rising globally, but it is particularly stark in the UK. When I gave birth in 2017, 29% of births in England took place by C-section. In 2025, that figure stands at 42%.

Why is this happening? There are leading voices within obstetrics, some of whom I spoke to while researching, who put it firmly down to rising levels of obesity, and the increased risks that come with it – including being more likely to need a C-section. But obesity intersects with other risk factors for pregnancy and birth complications, such as social deprivation. And then there is the fact that so many of us are having our babies later than previous generations – age being yet another risk factor for complications during pregnancy and birth, including a higher likelihood of having a C-section. Evidently, it’s a complex picture, and there is not one clear answer.

Hannah Marsh is the author of Thread: A Caesarean story of myth, magic and medicine