From disease eradication efforts to advances in vaccination and maternal health, this archive tracks real progress in public health. Stories here focus on what’s working — policies, interventions, and research that are improving and extending lives around the world.
“The findings suggest that lifetime classic psychedelic use is associated with lower odds of having had heart disease or diabetes in the past year,” lead study author and Oxford sociologist Otto Simonsson.
In a landmark trial, a cocktail of immunotherapy medications harnessed patients’ immune systems to kill their own cancer cells and prompted “a positive trend in survival.”
Ayushman Bharat, India’s flagship health insurance for the least privileged communities, will provide coverage for #trans individuals that includes support for sex-change operations.
The world’s first malaria vaccine just cleared its biggest hurdle: after pilot programs delivered more than 2.3 million doses across Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi, the World Health Organization has recommended RTS,S for broad use in sub-Saharan Africa. The shot targets the deadliest malaria parasite and prevented roughly four in ten cases in trials — modest-sounding, but a genuine triumph after a century of scientific effort. WHO leaders say it could save tens of thousands of young lives each year, working alongside bed nets, drugs, and mosquito control rather than replacing them. For a disease that has shaped childhood across the continent for generations, this is a real turning point — and a reminder that the slow, stubborn work of global health science can still change the world.
BioNTech, the German company that developed Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine, is now testing whether mRNAs can treat cancer in humans. The treatment has already completely shrunk tumors in mice.
A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center is showing a novel blood test can detect the presence of lung cancer with over 90% accuracy using artificial intelligence.
Nitzan Horowitz, the out Minister of Health in Israel, proclaimed, “There’s no difference between one blood and the other. Discrimination against gays in donating blood is over.”
Studies from Columbia University, University of California Berkeley, and other renowned institutions show that chlorpyrifos can damage the developing brains of children, causing reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders.
The clinical trials will start on August 19 and end sometime around spring 2023, according to the National Institutes of Health’s trial registry. They will involve 56 HIV-negative participants aged 18 to 56.
Targeting a pair of rare genetic blood diseases, the experimental therapy has so far been 100 percent effective in all 22 patients treated.
