The Merck Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Merck KGaA Germany, has marked World Hypertension Day 2025 by reinforcing its commitment to building health systems capacity for cardiovascular and diabetes care in Africa and beyond. The Foundation is working in partnership with Africa’s First Ladies, ministries of health, medical societies, and academic institutions through its “Nationwide…
A groundbreaking study has found that exposure to air pollution during pregnancy may alter the structure of the developing fetal brain, even in pregnancies that appear otherwise healthy. The research, led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), analyzed over 700 pregnancies and provides the most detailed look yet at how pollutants like nitrogen…
Lung Function Begins to Decline in Early 20s, Landmark Study Reveals A major international study has upended longstanding assumptions about how our lungs age, revealing that lung function begins to decline shortly after its peak in the early twenties — much earlier than previously believed. The research, led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health…
They live in your pocket, and they have all the time in the world: for some worried parents, talking to healthcare bots about immunisation may be just what the doctor ordered. 3 June 2025 by David Akinadewo-Adekahunsi Mabel Nwachukwu’s baby was two months old, and she was worried she didn’t know enough about her child’s…
Vaccination rid Kenya of wild-type poliovirus over a decade ago, but a lapse in immunisation rates or surveillance now could be incredibly costly, experts explain. 4 June 2025 by Joyce Chimbi Joyce Nakhumicha was an all-round healthy baby, born in the planting season of 1977 in western Kenya. In the early 1980s, she fell suddenly…
What began as a sore throat for Harimalala, a young woman from Madagascar’s east coast, slowly turned into a life-threatening neck mass that left her gasping for breath and hiding from the world. But thanks to a team of volunteer surgeons from the international charity Mercy Ships, her life has taken a dramatic and hopeful…
A small region of the brain, known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), plays a key role in how we process rewards. It produces dopamine, a neuromodulator that helps predict future rewards based on contextual cues. A team from the universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Harvard, and McGill has shown that the VTA goes even further:…
New research led by Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), the University of Geneva (UNIGE), and the Universitäre Psychiatrische Dienste Bern (UPD) at the University of Bern (UNIBE) suggests that sleep-wake perception and regulatory systems remain largely intact in people with insomnia disorder. The findings, published in Scientific Reportsunder the title “Preserved perception of sleep–wake states in…
Mauritania and Papua New Guinea have officially eliminated trachoma, the world’s leading cause of infectious blindness, as a public health problem. The announcement was made during the World Health Assembly (WHA78) in Geneva, where 11 countries were recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO) for eliminating at least one neglected tropical disease (NTD) since the…
Africa took a monumental leap toward healthcare sovereignty today with the official opening of the African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE) in Abuja, Nigeria. Developed by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in partnership with King’s College Hospital, London, the US$300 million tertiary care facility is the largest specialised private hospital in West Africa. It signals…