Global Health Programs aggregator

World Health Organization: Passengers leave hantavirus-hit cruise ship in Tenerife as WHO says outbreak ‘not another COVID’

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Passengers and crew from the cruise ship MV Hondius began disembarking in Tenerife on Sunday under a tightly coordinated international health operation led by Spanish authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO), as officials sought to reassure the public that the outbreak “is not another COVID.”

World Health Organization: WHO chief heads to Tenerife to oversee Sunday arrival of hantavirus-hit ship

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has issued a direct plea for calm and solidarity to the citizens of Tenerife ahead of the scheduled arrival of the MV Hondius on Sunday

World Health Organization: Malaria vaccine is saving children’s lives: WHO

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

New evidence shows that malaria vaccination is significantly reducing child deaths in Africa and could have an even greater impact as programmes expand, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

World Health Organization: Ukraine: Over 3,000 attacks on healthcare since full-scale Russian invasion

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The World Health Organization (WHO) has verified more than 3,000 attacks on healthcare in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the UN agency reported on Friday.

World Health Organization: Wider hantavirus outbreak risk is ‘absolutely low’, insists UN health agency

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The risk of hantavirus spreading to the general population is “absolutely low”, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) stressed on Friday, as a flight attendant tested negative for the disease after coming into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship at the centre of the outbreak, who later died.

Global Health Now: Global Health NOW: The Health-Improving Power of Pollinators; and The Deep Disparities in Kenya’s AI-Driven Health Coverage

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:56:26 -0400

Global Health NOW: The Health-Improving Power of Pollinators; and The Deep Disparities in Kenya’s AI-Driven Health Coverage

View this email in your browser

May 7, 2026


Forward	Share	Post

IN FOCUS

A honeybee sits on a marigold flower to collect nectar. Kathmandu, Nepal, February 8, 2024. Sanjit Pariyar/NurPhoto via Getty

The Health-Improving Power of Pollinators

Wild insect pollinators have a direct impact on human health and livelihoods through the critical role they play in food production and nutrition, finds new research published in Nature that quantifies those connections in precise and tangible ways.

Exploring the links in Nepal: To “understand and harness the pathways linking biodiversity to human health,” researchers spent a year inside 10 farming villages in Jumla District, Nepal, where three-quarters of the population depends directly on smallholder farming, reports NPR.

"That link between the biodiversity around them, and their health, their nutrition, their livelihoods is very, very direct,” explained lead author Thomas Timberlake.

Researchers tracked daily diets of 776 people and cataloged extensive activity between insects and crops across 500+ species—gauging the influence of insects on crops, and crops on humans.

A vast web of connections: Pollinators were essential to crops that accounted for 44% of household farming income and 20%+ of vital nutrient intake, including vitamin A, folate, and vitamin E.

Interdependent losses: Some populations are drastically affected by the decline of pollinators like native honeybee populations, which are critical for pollinating multiple crops, and which have dropped by ~50% over ~10 years in some Nepalese regions due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change.

Symbiotic gains: Researchers identified “relatively simple interventions” that significantly boost pollinators, including planting wildflowers, curbing pesticide use, and native beekeeping.

Active pollination management could increase household income by 15%–30% and raise 9% of the population out of a nutrient deficiency.

GLOBAL HEALTH VOICES

HEALTH DISPARITIES

The Deep Disparities in Kenya’s AI-Driven Health Coverage

Kenya’s new health coverage program is facing backlash over its algorithm formula that is “systematically” driving up costs for the nation’s poorest.

Background: The Social Health Authority (SHA), launched in 2023, was meant to overhaul the country’s decades-old national insurance system and expand coverage.

To determine what households can afford to contribute, the government is using a predictive machine-learning algorithm that calculates incomes based on possessions and life circumstances.

A flawed formula: The new system has overcharged more than half of poor households while underestimating wealthier ones, found an investigation by Africa Uncensored in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and The Guardian.

Impact: Of 20 million+ people registered for SHA, ~5 million are paying their premiums, leading many to be denied care, and hospitals report large deficits as SHA reimbursements remain unpaid.

Africa Uncensored

ICYMI: Rooting Out AI’s Biases – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

OPPORTUNITY

Call for Abstracts

The International Conference for Urban Health (ICUH) invites abstracts for work addressing issues in global urban health to share in Mexico City this coming October 13–17, under the theme Healthy Cities by Design: Climate, Care, & Community from Latin America to the World.

Submissions are open across six thematic tracks spanning climate resilience, food and movement, mental health and belonging, lifecourse health, urban health systems, and a dedicated Latin America and Caribbean spotlight, with submissions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese welcome.

Register for the conference

Learn more and submit your abstract

Deadline: May 17

ALMOST FRIDAY DIVERSION

No Divine Intervention for a Pope on Hold

Nothing tests one’s faith quite like a soul-crushing call with customer service. And when it comes to escaping the purgatory of the hold line, it turns out even the Pope doesn’t have a prayer.

Like anyone shifting careers and houses, Robert Prevost-turned Pope Leo XIV had to make some calls updating his address and phone number, including a call he personally made to his bank in South Chicago, relayed his longtime friend.

The pontiff’s successful responses to security questions rivaling St. Peter’s at the Pearly Gates still weren’t enough to satisfy the customer service representative, who informed him that he needed to come to the bank in person, per the New York Times (gift link).

Even the patience of Job runs out at a point, and even the Holy Father resorted to pulling the ace up his vestments’ sleeve: “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he purportedly said.

Click.

Could the Pope’s experience bring a little needed fire and brimstone to the $165 billion American “annoyance economy” of interminable customer service hassles and corporate sludge?

It would be a miracle worthy of canonization.

QUICK HITS

One Million More Midwives: The Smartest Investment for Safer Births in a Shrinking Aid Landscape – Nigeria Health Watch

In a milestone for ALS, a treatment helps some patients improve – The New York Times (gift link)

Survey: Facing headwinds, early-career physician-scientists mull other options, jobs abroad – CIDRAP

Georgia officials knew chemicals from carpet mills were polluting local water. The people did not – AP

First AI tool to detect suspicious peer reviews rolled out by academic publisher – Nature

RFK Jr withdraws proposal banning teens from tanning beds as skin experts warn of cancer risks – The Independent

Issue No. 2912

Global Health NOW is an initiative of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Contributors include Brian W. Simpson, MPH, Dayna Kerecman Myers, Annalies Winny, Morgan Coulson, Kate Belz, Melissa Hartman, Jackie Powder, and Rin Swann. Write us: dkerecm1@jhu.edu, like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram @globalhealth.now and X @GHN_News.

Please send the Global Health NOW free sign-up link to friends and colleagues: http://www.globalhealthnow.org/subscribe

Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

ABOUT
SUPPORT US
CONTACT US

Copyright 2026 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All Rights Reserved. Views and opinions expressed in Global Health NOW do not necessarily reflect those of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health or Johns Hopkins University.

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

�鶹��ý��վ Faculty of Medicine news: Public education will be critical as provinces roll out new cervical cancer screening method, researchers say

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:37:38 -0400

As Canada moves to modernize cervical cancer screening, a new study suggests most women do not yet understand or trust the shift from the Pap test to human papillomavirus (HPV) based screening.

The national survey, published in Current Oncology, examined women’s preferences for cervical screening – including how they want to be screened and how they want information communicated – as Canada transitions from Pap tests to HPV testing.

World Health Organization: Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship not ‘another COVID’, WHO says

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean poses a low global public health risk and is “not the start of another COVID pandemic”, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Global Health Now: Global Health NOW: Identifying ‘The Deadliest Company in the World’; and On the Front Lines of an Emerging Drug Crisis

Wed, 06 May 2026 09:32:01 -0400

Global Health NOW: Identifying ‘The Deadliest Company in the World’; and On the Front Lines of an Emerging Drug Crisis

View this email in your browser

May 6, 2026


Forward	Share	Post

IN FOCUS

The exterior of the China Tobacco Shanghai Cigarette Factory Building. Shanghai, China, March 28. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty

Identifying ‘The Deadliest Company in the World’

A handful of powerful industries play a major role in driving deaths from chronic diseases worldwide: tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, and fossil fuels, which together are responsible for at least one-third of global deaths, per a landmark Lancet study published in The Lancet in 2023.

Outsized impact: Among those industries, one company stands out as the single commercial entity linked to the most global deaths: China National Tobacco Corp., better known as China Tobacco—a state-owned company that for decades has controlled ~97% of China’s cigarette market in a country that consumes nearly half the world’s cigarettes.

Staggering toll: Tobacco use in China caused ~59–78 million deaths from 1990 to 2023, or 2 million people annually, per data from the Global Burden of Disease study run by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

China Tobacco is tied to ~57 million of those deaths—a toll surpassing fatalities linked to war, drugs, or traffic worldwide, even adjusting for the highest plausible death estimates from those other industries.

The company also wields significant influence over China’s public health policy, systematically undercutting anti-smoking efforts.

Intervention possible—and unlikely: Because of China Tobacco’s centralized role, direct policy change could avert millions of early deaths over decades.

But the government’s dependence on billions in tax revenue from the industry means the company “is likely to retain its spot as No. 1 in the world for years to come.”

The Examination

Related:

FDA announces its first OK of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes for adults in major shift under Trump – AP

Can vaping cause cancer? The evidence suggests it might. – The Washington Post (gift link)

Hans Henri P. Kluge: Big Tobacco is No Longer Selling Cigarettes – It Is Engineering Addiction – Health Policy Watch (commentary)

GLOBAL HEALTH VOICES

OPIOIDS

On the Front Lines of an Emerging Drug Crisis

In the swiftly shape-shifting opioid market, morgues and medical examiners are increasingly the first to flag new deadly drugs when typical detection methods fail.

Novel opioids like cychlorphine—a powerful synthetic opioid up to 10X stronger than fentanyl—often go undetected in labs.

“Sentinels of public health”: A Knoxville, Tenn., medical examiner was key to alerting public health officials and law enforcement to the rise of cychlorphine—which she flagged after a long push for advanced testing in a suspicious overdose case.

Rapidly rising threat: In just six months, ~50 deaths in the region have been linked to cychlorphine, making it one of the leading local causes of overdose fatalities.

The New York Times (gift link)

OPPORTUNITY

QUICK HITS

‘Spreading like wildfire’: Fiji grapples with soaring HIV cases – AFP via The Japan Times

Why rat virus patients could become super-spreaders – The Telegraph

Zambia blasts the US over a $2 billion health deal in exchange for critical minerals – AP

Can promises on gender equality made in Australia help a 16-year-old Indian cigarette maker with no toilet? – The Guardian

CDC leader calls for new journal to 'elevate scientific rigor' – Science

Health care costs outrank food, vaccine concerns for MAHA voters, poll shows – The Washington Post (gift link)

US woman moves to France and cuts annual asthma drug cost from $36,000 to $3,500 – The Connexion Thanks for the tip, Cecilia Meisner!

Issue No. 2911

ABOUT
SUPPORT US
CONTACT US

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

World Health Organization: Hantavirus outbreak: Another passenger contracts disease

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

It’s been confirmed that another passenger from the cruise liner linked to the outbreak of hantavirus has contracted the disease, which has claimed the lives of three people on board and sparked an international alert coordinated by the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

Global Health Programs aggregator

World Health Organization: Passengers leave hantavirus-hit cruise ship in Tenerife as WHO says outbreak ‘not another COVID’

World Health Organization: WHO chief heads to Tenerife to oversee Sunday arrival of hantavirus-hit ship

World Health Organization: Malaria vaccine is saving children’s lives: WHO

World Health Organization: Ukraine: Over 3,000 attacks on healthcare since full-scale Russian invasion

World Health Organization: Wider hantavirus outbreak risk is ‘absolutely low’, insists UN health agency

Global Health Now: Global Health NOW: The Health-Improving Power of Pollinators; and The Deep Disparities in Kenya’s AI-Driven Health Coverage

TOP STORIES

IN FOCUS

The Health-Improving Power of Pollinators

GLOBAL HEALTH VOICES

HEALTH DISPARITIES

The Deep Disparities in Kenya’s AI-Driven Health Coverage

OPPORTUNITY

Call for Abstracts

ALMOST FRIDAY DIVERSION

No Divine Intervention for a Pope on Hold

QUICK HITS

Issue No. 2912

�鶹��ý��վ Faculty of Medicine news: Public education will be critical as provinces roll out new cervical cancer screening method, researchers say

World Health Organization: Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship not ‘another COVID’, WHO says

Global Health Now: Global Health NOW: Identifying ‘The Deadliest Company in the World’; and On the Front Lines of an Emerging Drug Crisis

TOP STORIES

IN FOCUS

Identifying ‘The Deadliest Company in the World’

GLOBAL HEALTH VOICES

OPIOIDS

On the Front Lines of an Emerging Drug Crisis

OPPORTUNITY

QUICK HITS

Issue No. 2911

World Health Organization: Hantavirus outbreak: Another passenger contracts disease