As the UK prepares to convene a new international coalition to tackle violence against women and girls, announced recently by the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, there is a growing sense that we are at a crossroads. While gender-based violence continues to dominate headlines globally, progress at scale remains out of reach.

The NHS 10 Year Plan aims to transform England’s health service through three key shifts: moving care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place. The 'fit for the future' plan, published in July 2025, is ambitious, and achieving its vision is made more complex at a time of tight government budgets.

The speed at which this current Andes hantavirus genome has been shared should be applauded, as it provides a valuable early signal to help with managing the outbreak.

Many experts, including myself, share the recent concerns laid out by the British Pharmacological Society, highlighting the urgent need for clearer guidance on the use of medicines during pregnancy and breastfeeding. I also agree that it’s time to include more women in drug trials, capitalising on the significant advances made in recent years which allow us to do this in a safe and effective way. 

Last week on 28 November 2025, the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), a committee of leading UK cancer specialists, published draft recommendations ahead of a consultation period with ministers that reiterate its current stance against population-based screening for prostate cancer.

Of the many paradoxes in public health, one is that success in controlling a disease leads to neglect and disinvestment, undermining that very success. The global AIDS response, one such success, is becoming a victim of our short-term memory and thinking, and the AIDS response is in danger of falling apart.

While many people will have heard of bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella, Klebsiella pneumoniae (also referred to as Klebsiella or K. pneumoniae) is not such a household name even though it leads to 250,000 global deaths each year.The latest evidence suggests Klebsiella, which can cause illnesses including pneumonia, sepsis, and urinary tract infections, is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, highlighting the global antimicrobial resistance crisis.

2025 has seen a surge in chikungunya globally. There have been outbreaks of the mosquito-borne virus in Indian Ocean islands, and further transmission to countries such as Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya and India, as well as more than 7,000 cases reported in China as of July 2025.

It’s not enough to have useful tools like vaccines to tackle disease epidemics. Those tools also need to be used. But countries are facing growing obstacles, from false information about disease threats to a lack of trust in the measures required to tackle them.

Becoming a parent is a major life event. It brings new responsibilities, demanding time, money and emotional resources, all coinciding with loss of sleep and with biological changes. Depression is common in new parents, affecting around a sixth of mothers and a tenth of fathers – and this matters for both of them and their babies.