Garry Aslanyan, Catherine Kyobutungi and Ricardo Baptista Leite
Garry Aslanyan, Catherine Kyobutungi and Ricardo Baptista Leite

Global health is facing a crisis not only in funding, leadership, and trust, but also in information integrity, according to speakers on the first episode of The Inside Track, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast.

Host Garry Aslanyan was joined by Catherine Kyobutungi and Ricardo Baptista Leite for a conversation on how misinformation spreads, why trust in science has eroded, and what health leaders can do to push back.

Kyobutungi said the problem has grown alongside an expanding information economy, where sensationalism often travels faster than facts. Scientists, she argued, have not adapted quickly enough to a landscape shaped by influencers, closed online communities and monetised content.

“The biggest, maybe the most colossal failure that … the global health community had was a failure of communication,” she said, pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic and the inability to clearly explain concepts such as risk to the public.

Baptista Leite warned that the issue goes beyond disagreement. In many cases, he said, people are no longer arguing over the same set of facts.

“If someone comes along and says, No, it’s not a chair, it’s a horse,” he said, “then the conversation becomes impossible.”

Still, both speakers said the answer is not retreat. Kyobutungi urged scientists and global health professionals to return to the public square, speak more clearly and engage not only with those spreading falsehoods, but also with the wider audience watching from the sidelines.

Later in the episode, the panel turned to a recent article on the spread of chikungunya in Europe, using it as an example of how climate warnings often fail to produce meaningful action. The discussion closed on a more hopeful note, highlighting promising work in artificial intelligence and a new Africa-led HIV vaccine trial.

For Kyobutungi, the battle is not lost. But the momentum, she suggested, must still be won back.

Listen to the full conversation >>

Read more about Global Health Matters podcasts on Health Policy Watch >>

Image Credits: Global Health Matters Podcast.

Prof Ntobeko Ntusi and Dr Garry Aslanyan
Prof Ntobeko Ntusi and Dr Garry Aslanyan

South Africa and the African continent must play a far greater role in shaping the future of global health, according to Ntobeko Ntusi, president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council.

Speaking during a Trailblazers episode of the Global Health Matters podcast with Dr Garry Aslanyan, Ntusi said his world-view was shaped first by his parents, then by teachers and mentors, and later by his experience treating patients with HIV at a time when treatment was not yet available in South Africa.

He said watching patients die during those years fuelled “a desire to have universal access and universal healthcare, but also a desire to ensure equity in all aspects of health and science.”

Ntusi said successful science councils must do more than fund research. They must explain the value of science to society, help governments understand why health research matters and align their work with national priorities.

In South Africa, he said, that means focusing on the country’s “quadruple burden of disease,” including HIV and tuberculosis, non-communicable diseases, mental health, violence, trauma, and maternal and child health. He said the council is also prioritising climate and health, digital health and AI, antimicrobial resistance, pandemic preparedness and universal health coverage.

Ntusi said violence remains one of South Africa’s deepest challenges and cannot be treated as a health issue alone. “These are not just health issues,” he said. “They are societal issues, and they need a whole of government and a whole of society.”

He also called for a major shift in how the world thinks about global health. Ntusi said he prefers the term “global majority” over Global South, noting that 85% of the world’s population lives in low- and middle-income countries.

“The first acknowledgement is that global health is failing in measures of equity by whatever measure one uses,” he said.

For Ntusi, leadership starts with clarity. The most important quality a leader can have, he said, is “self-awareness.”

Listen to the full episode >>

Read more about Global Health Matters episodes on Health Policy Watch>>

Image Credits: Global Health Matters.

This chart illustrates the trajectory of net bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) for health from DAC countries.
Projected health aid spending through 2027 shows a precipitous drop in international commitments, forcing global health reform.

Unprecedented reductions in international aid have served as a powerful catalyst for long-overdue global health reform, according to a comprehensive new report published by the Wellcome Trust on Wednesday.

The extensive synthesis of five regional dialogues involving 114 countries reveals that sweeping financial pullbacks from traditional funders are forcing a fundamental restructuring of international medical cooperation.

John-Arne Røttingen, Chief Executive Officer of the Wellcome Trust.
John-Arne Røttingen, Chief Executive Officer of the Wellcome Trust.

“What happens next depends on our willingness to move forward together – and to seize this moment to build a healthier future for all,” said John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive officer of the Wellcome Trust, upon the report’s release in March 2026.

He emphasised that if stakeholders navigate these structural shifts correctly, history will view this as the dawn of a positive new era for international care.

The Wellcome analysis underscores that the prevailing aid-centric model is no longer viable, as major traditional benefactors drastically scale back their commitments.

Development assistance for the health sector is projected to plummet by 60% by 2030, returning to levels last seen in 2009, a recent European Union (EU) and Like-Minded Donors’ Reflection Process revealed.

These financial shortfalls severely threaten to unravel decades of progress against infectious diseases and maternal mortality. The EU and other donors acknowledged this contested multilateralism, noting that external assistance must now be treated as temporary and catalytic rather than perpetual.

The current architecture is widely criticised as fragmented, overly centralised, and structurally incapable of addressing the shifting burden of non-communicable diseases. Systemic inefficiencies and deep power imbalances have left low- and middle-income countries heavily reliant on volatile external financing, thereby eroding their domestic sovereignty.

In response, a powerful consensus is emerging that authentic global health reform must empower low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and regional coalitions to govern their own agendas.

To navigate this outlook, the report outlines three critical pillars for structural reform: decentralising global health governance, overhauling international financing, and securing regional sovereignty over data and medical manufacturing.

Driving global health reform through regional power

114 nations participated in five cross-continental dialogues to outline the global health reforms.
114 nations participated in five cross-continental dialogues to outline the global health reforms.

As traditional Western funding wanes in a multipolar world, geopolitical analysts note that middle powers are actively navigating this rupture by seeking innovative funding mechanisms and stronger partnerships with multilateral development banks.

The urgent necessity for structural change has propelled regional organisations, such as the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), firmly into the spotlight. These bodies are increasingly viewed as the rightful anchors for policy setting, technical cooperation, and the pooled procurement of essential medicines.

To safeguard digital independence, stakeholders are increasingly advocating for unified digital public infrastructures, such as the proposed African Health Data and Governance Framework. This framework would ensure that African health data is stored, managed and used within the continent to actively protect national sovereignty. By maintaining local control, this approach empowers African nations to monetise their own data through value addition, such as for clinical trials, rather than relying on external systems.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, stakeholders have similarly proposed a Health Catalytic Platform (LAC-HCP) to coordinate investments in regional public goods, such as AI-powered health data architectures and shared technology assessments.

Experts assert that meaningful global health reform must move away from a fragmented, disease-specific approach towards integrated primary care systems driven by local governments. In this new approach, global health initiatives should step back from being the centre of gravity and instead act as facilitators that support and accelerate country-driven goals.

The international architecture is being actively pressed to become leaner, with the World Health Organization (WHO) focusing strictly on its core mandate of normative guidance. Concurrently, operational control and implementation should be increasingly ceded to capable regional and national actors.

Sovereign debt crisis threatens global health reform

Decades of progress in maternal and adolescent health could be jeopardized by impending donor funding cuts.

The success of global health reform is severely threatened by the macroeconomic reality that nearly 60% of countries eligible for International Development Association (IDA) support currently face debt distress. Policy experts warn that without alleviating these unsustainable debt burdens, LMICs will lack the fiscal capacity required to transition away from donor dependence.

To circumvent these debt-trap dynamics and the precipitous decline in external assistance, proponents are shifting their focus toward entirely new financing streams that do not rely on traditional lending. These include global solidarity levies, regional solidarity funds and expanded domestic taxation to finance sustainable primary care.

​​Global Health Infrastructure is Changing. Why Getting it Right Matters

Countries are already pushing ahead, with France, Kenya and Barbados leading a coalition to invest proceeds from aviation sector taxes into resilient health investments and fair transitions. At the national level, the Democratic Republic of Congo recently implemented a 2% import tax to generate health revenues, while Zambia increased its budget allocation to health to 13%.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, stakeholders have similarly put forward a Regional Health Solidarity Fund to pool resources and coordinate regional health investments. Additionally, international coalitions are increasingly proposing structural economic interventions, including a global hub for debt swaps for development hosted at the World Bank.

Furthermore, nine major financial institutions and countries have formed an alliance to promote the inclusion of debt pause clauses in official lending.

While proponents see these as vital tools, critics argue that these approaches fail to address the scale of the crisis and often replace traditional aid with conditional financial oversight. Instead, many advocate for unconditional debt cancellation to provide immediate liquidity, echoing long-standing historical demands.

“Unless the issue of who owns the money is changed, we are stuck,” stated an African government official during the consultations for the EU and Like-Minded Donors’ Reflection Process.

Empowering civil society and regional cooperation

The proposed "Sovereign Architecture" (blue) moves away from the failing, centralized donor model toward a decentralized system.
The proposed “Sovereign Architecture” (blue) moves away from the centralized model toward a decentralised system.

Civil society organisations have also demanded a radical redistribution of influence, arguing that community voices remain marginalised in high-level decision-making forums. The Wellcome report highlights that equitable global health reform demands formal participation mechanisms over informal, tokenistic arrangements.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic vividly exposed the fragility of highly concentrated production systems, prompting urgent calls for distributed manufacturing capabilities. Regional dialogues have confirmed that shaping health markets through pooled purchasing and local production is critical to guaranteeing equitable access to life-saving commodities.

“Africa is saying: we don’t just want vaccines delivered to us, we want the capacity to produce them ourselves… The world must adjust to this new reality,” an Africa Dialogue participant stated during the regional consultations published in the report.

The current financial contraction offers an opportunity to dismantle outdated donor structures and forge a highly resilient, decentralised network that respects country ownership, the report underscores.

To translate this perspective into tangible global health reform, the Wellcome Trust will host a major global convening in April 2026, gathering stakeholders from five global regions to explore areas of emerging consensus and establish concrete pathways for action. The synthesis report and the regional priorities it highlights are intended to support and guide current reform efforts at both the global and regional levels.

The organisation will remain engaged in these varied dialogues because their overarching goal is “to foster coherence and promote holistic thinking and action,” Fabian Moser, policy advisor at Wellcome and one of the authors of the paper, explained in response to a query by Health Policy Watch.

Image Credits: Nadia Marini/MSF , Hera/EU, Wellcome Trust, Felix Sassmannshausen/HPW.

A doctor and her young patient. The American Academy of Pediatrics is opposing changes to the US childhood vaccination schedule.

A United States judge has temporarily halted US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine agenda, ruling on Monday that Kennedy’s firing of the country’s vaccine advisory committee and changes to childhood vaccinations were likely illegal.

US District Judge Brian Murphy ruled that the January changes to the vaccination schedule and Kennedy’s firing of all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) are likely to have violated the Administrative Procedure Act. 

Murphy has issued three temporary stays – on the changes to the vaccination schedule, the appointment of 13 ACIP members and all decisions of the Kennedy-appointed ACIP. These stays will be in place until Murphy can rule on a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical organisations against Kennedy’s “unilateral changes” to vaccinations for children and pregnant women.

“Faced with plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief, the court concludes that plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the reconstitution of ACIP and the January 2026 changes to the childhood immunization schedule violate the Administrative Procedure Act,” Murphy ruled.

Reacting to the ruling, AAP president Dr Andrew Racine said on Monday evening that it “effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years.” 

The AAP represents over 67,000 paediatricians throughout the US.

Dr Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, described the ruling as “a win for public health and reaffirms that national vaccine policy should be guided by rigorous, evidence-based science, not politics.”

Dr Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association, said that “trust occurs when we engage the public in a transparent process, not one where decisions are made behind closed doors by unqualified individuals and presented in a disingenuous way.” 

Seven professional bodies are co-plaintiffs in the case against Kennedy, including the American College of Physicians, American Public Health Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Three unnamed pregnant women are also plaintiffs.

Appointment of ‘vaccine skeptics’

The AAP case focused initially on changes in recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines but was later extended to oppose the changed schedule for childhood vaccines, after the US Health and Human Services (HHS) reduced the number of recommended vaccines from 17 to 11. 

The AAP argues that the HHS arbitrarily and illegally overhauled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccination schedule “without following the evidentiary-driven, and legally required processes.”

It also argues that Kennedy and the HHS have failed to “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation” for:

  • the appointment of vaccine skeptics to ACIP after all previous members were fired;
  • votes taken by ACIP changing recommendations on the hepatitis B and COVID-19 vaccines and urging manufacturers to stop using thimerosal as a preservative in influenza vaccines;
  • the alteration of the immunization schedule, which no longer recommends shots for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus, flu and meningococcal disease for all infants; and
  • the removal of the CDC’s routine recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Memos released by HHS in response to AAP’s lawsuit show that the department based its decision to restrict COVID-19 vaccines on scanty reports that lacked scientific evidence, according to weekend reports

“The memos overlooked hundreds of studies on the benefits and safety of COVID vaccination and set the precedent for making changes to vaccine recommendations based on ideology instead of evidence,” the Guardian reported.

Data from the US CDC itself, based on COVID-19 vaccination of more than a million pregnant women, found that the vaccine “did not increase health risks for pregnant women or their babies” and “the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh potential risks”.

The studies showed “no increased risk for complications like miscarriage, preterm delivery, stillbirth, or birth defects”, while COVID-19 infection could cause stillbirths, preterm delivery and hospitalisation of babies.

ACIP meeting stopped

The ACIP meeting scheduled for later this week will no longer go ahead. One of its agenda items was on COVID-19 vaccine injuries, with speculation that the committee is preparing to discontinue COVID-19 mRNA vaccines altogether.

ACIP vice-chair and vaccine sceptic Robert Malone described Murphy’s decision as “activist judicial intervention” in a lengthy Substack post devoted mainly to defending his qualifications.

However, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is polling badly with the US public, according to Republican polling company Fabrizio Ward.

An extract from the Fabrizio Ward poll on vaccines.

In a report issued last December, Fabrizio Ward reported that its polling showed “strong bipartisan support for routine childhood vaccines in the nation’s most competitive House districts, with majorities across political affiliations acknowledging their benefits and safety” – including with voters in Kennedy’s Make America Health Again (MAHA) camp.

“While the MAHA agenda is broadly popular in the area food and agriculture, vaccine skepticism stands as an outlier, rejected by most voters even within the MAHA movement,” the company notes.

Image Credits: American Academy of Pediatrics, Fabrizio Ward.

A black carbon monitoring station at a glacier in Nepal has recorded the effects of black carbon on melting ice.

BANGKOK – The combination of heat and “super pollutants” is emerging as a critical threat to human health, according to experts at the Better Air Quality (BAQ) conference which ended last Friday in Bangkok.

Short-lived super pollutants – methane, black carbon, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), nitrous oxide and ground-level ozone – contribute to half of global warming and millions of premature deaths. 

These pollutants have a short life span, but some can be transported thousands of kilometres in days.  Meanwhile, rising heat and humidity can create dangerously high heat stress temperatures and worsen the impact of breathing polluted air. 

“From a biological pathway perspective, one hypothesis is that heat stress may increase susceptibility to the respiratory toxicity of PM2.5 (a fine particulate matter pollutant), potentially through airway dehydration, epithelial irritation, and enhanced inflammatory responses,” Steve HL Yim, a professor of environmental health at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told Health Policy Watch.

Long-term exposure to black carbon already heightens the risk of cancers such as lung adenocarcinoma, commonly seen in non-smokers. Short-term exposure to black carbon may exacerbate asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD or chronic lung disease), while short-term exposure to ozone may result in lung function damage.

Yim’s research shows how a global increase of just 0.1 microgram/cubic metre in black carbon (soot) concentration is associated with a 12% increase in the incidence of lung adenocarcinoma, a type of lung cancer usually associated with air pollution.

Risk for Global South

The combination of super pollutants and heat are on the rise in many parts of the world, especially in the Global South where tropical and developing nations are struggling to balance climate change adaptation while pursuing rapid development.

“The situation in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa is worse compared with North America and Europe,” said Yim, who is an expert member of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Air Pollution and Health Technical Advisory Group.

The risk is threefold, Yim explained. First, the emissions in the three regions are high. Second, the latest technologies take time to be transferred to the three regions. Third, there is no regulation or standard, measurement network in the three regions. 

Trans-boundary air pollution in South East Asia already causes health problems, and hot weather in these regions could create a “synergistic health effect… (that is) very serious”.

Professor Steve Yim from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University

The sources of super pollutants are all around us. Black carbon comes from burning biomass and fossil fuels; methane from waste, cattle, agriculture, and industry; ozone indirectly from vehicles thanks to a chemical reaction between heat and vehicular exhaust; and HFCs from sectors such as refrigeration and air conditioning.

Tackling these pollutants can be highly effective, according to Jane Burston, CEO of the Clean Air Fund, a global philanthropy. 

“Half of the global warming that we have experienced to date is because of super pollutants,” said Burston.

“Because they don’t spend very long in the atmosphere, the quicker we can reduce them, the quicker this will impact climate change, which is why they’ve come to be known as the emergency brake on climate change.”

Burston says preventing super-pollutants could potentially avoid more than half a degree of warming by 2050 and prevent millions of premature deaths. Air pollution was linked to over eight million deaths in 2021. 

Convincing governments to act

Development and funding agencies spoke candidly, calling on governments to step up national action and regional cooperation, which can be hard given the tension between several neighbours. 

Patrick Bueker, senior technical advisor at the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), called for a “carrot-and-stick approach” for policymakers. The “carrot” involves demonstrating the benefits of regional co-operation in Southeast Asia, such as sharing best practices and data. Bueker suggested a new regional declaration, building on the existing Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreement on transboundary haze.

The “stick” requires citizens to “push policymakers into acting on air pollution. We haven’t seen any improvement in the region,” Bueker said. 

While the effects of particulate matter (PM2.5) is well known, there is less awareness of ozone, which affects health and agricultural productivity. An informed public can “push policymakers to action”. 

From left: Clyde Hutchinson (ADB-Korea Climate Technology Hub), Patrick Bueker (GIZ) and Parth Sarathi Mahapatra (ICIMOD) with  Jane Burston, Clean Air Fund CEO (right).

Citizen science vital for air pollution

Clyde Hutchinson of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) identifies citizen science as a major opportunity, emphasising this as key to shared responsibilities: “Technology is accessible and cheap, (air pollution) sensors are cheap. We can do everything on our phone; all of us can be climate scientists now.”

Hutchinson says his role as a technology specialist of the ADB-Korea Climate Technology Hub is to “match-make” funding and technology with policy action. 

“There’s no challenge with technology or funding. So what is going wrong here? 
Why can’t we get these programs underway? And that’s part of my job. How do we match both the funding and the technology?” asked Hutchinson.

Complicated regional dynamics

The impact of open and biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion, mainly in India and Nepal, has already accelerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers. A pollution monitoring station on a Nepalese glacier at approximately 5,000 metres above sea level captured proof of this, and the culprit is black carbon.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain-Himalayan Foothills region is one of the largest, most polluted airsheds in the world, and is also in a politically sensitive neighbourhood. A key agency, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), working on air quality, has a difficult task as two of its member, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are engaged in conflict. 

Political co-operation remains unlikely even though ICIMOD has shepherded an air quality agreement – the Thimphu Outcome. Separately, the World Bank is providing hundreds of millions of dollars as loans across the countries. 

Despite the tensions, ICIMOD representative Parth Sarathi Mahapatra says countries “could come together voluntarily to form a cooperation platform.” 

Mahapatra, an air pollution mitigation specialist, says scientific evidence as provided from the Himalayan glacier and customising solutions from a local to the national level could encourage South Asian policy makers to act on super pollutants. Black carbon alone is affecting the richest source of freshwater, after the poles, for millions of people downstream from the glaciers. 

Against rising heat, government action can no longer afford to proceed at a glacial pace.

Image Credits: Nanyang Technological University, Chetan Bhattacharji.

A Beirut shelter for displaced Lebanese – across the region an estimated four million people have been uprooted from their homes.

The deepening conflict across the Middle East has displaced nearly 3.2 million people in Iran, according to new estimates by UNHCR, as well as nearly 800,000 people in Lebanon, mostly in the southern region, according to a new WHO situation report. 

After the Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah entered the war on 2 March firing barrages of rockets at northern Israel, Israel struck back with multiple evacuation orders and intense air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in the country’s southern region, as well as Beirut’s Dahiya quarter, which are still continuing. 

Health services in some 50 clinics and five hospitals in southern Lebanon have been suspended, WHO said, with 25 attacks on Lebanese health care facilities  across the country, leading to 16 deaths, as of 11 March. WHO has verified 18 attacks on health care since 28 February, resulting in 8 deaths among health workers. Over the same period in Lebanon, 25 attacks on health care have resulted in 16 deaths and 29 injuries.  

Israel’s northern region, under almost hourly Hezbollah bombardment since 2 March, has also seen population displacement. Northern and central Israel, targeted by missiles daily, has seen the suspension of all but critical health operations – which have largely moved underground. 

Toxic smoke covers Tehran

Tehran covered by toxic smoke at 8 a.m. on 8 March.

Meanwhile, analysts are increasingly worried about the risk of severe environmental health hazards if the  region’s sensitive water and oil infrastructure is further damaged in the conflict. 

Iran’s capital, Tehran, was covered for two days by a blanket of toxic air pollution last week from after air strikes last week on one of the city’s main oil depots. 

“Petroleum fires and smoke from damaged infrastructure exposed nearby communities to toxic pollutants that potentially cause breathing problems, eye and skin irritation, and contaminated water and food sources,” noted WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office in a situation analysis released on Wednesday, the first since the war began on 28 February with a joint US-Israeli attack on key military and strategic targets that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Water desalination infrastructure threatened

Dubai’s downtown and tourism industry are sustained by dozens of water desalination plants.

Both Iran and Bahrain have seen airstrikes on sensitive water desalination infrastructure over the past week including:  

  • UAE (2-3 March 2026): Damage from an Iranian strike was reported near Doha’s Fujairah F1 power and water complex (UAE), although the plant itself was not damaged. Iranian strikes on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port also reportedly hit close to a massive complex of some 43 desalination units that are key to the city’s drinking water production. 
  • Kuwait (2 March) – At Kuwait’s Doha West plant, falling debris  from an intercepted drone caused a minor fire at its power and water desalination station. 
  • Qeshm Island, Iran (March 7, 2026): Iran accused the U.S. of striking a desalination plant, affecting the water supply for 30 villages.
  • Bahrain (March 8, 2026): Bahrain reported that an Iranian drone attack caused material damage to one of its desalination plants.

The spectre of more such attacks would be a “nightmarish” scenario for both water-stressed Iran as well as Gulf States that depend overwhelmingly on desalination for drinking water supplies, in the words of one Gulf-based media outlet, The Straits Times. 

Occupied Gaza and the West Bank

Some 42,000 Gazans will need prolonged rehabilitation care and support due to war-related trauma injuries and amputations.

In Gaza, medical evacuations for treatment abroad remain suspended since 28 February, while hospitals continue to operate under strain amid ongoing shortages of medicines, medical supplies and fuel, which is being rationed to prioritize essential health services such as emergency and trauma care, maternal and neonatal services, and management of communicable diseases.

In the occupied West Bank,  increased movement restrictions and checkpoint closures are delaying ambulance and mobile clinics’ access across several governorates, WHO reported in its update. Israeli settler extremists have also seized upon the chaos of the war to ramp up attacks on Palestinian West Bank settlements, while uniformed soldiers turn a blind eye or even cooperate. At least six Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of March – five by settlers and one by the Israeli military.

Disruptions to WHO emergency shipments 

The war in Iran has paralyzed the delivery of WHO supplies from Dubai’s international humanitarian hub, the world’s largest.

Temporary airspace restrictions have continued to disrupt the movement of medical supplies from WHO’s global logistics hub in Dubai. More than 50 emergency supply requests, intended to benefit over 1.5 million people across 25 countries, are affected, said WHO in its update.  Current priority shipments include supplies planned for Al Arish, Egypt, to support the Gaza response, as well as Lebanon and Afghanistan. “he first shipment, containing cholera response supplies for Mozambique, is expected to depart from the hub in the coming week.”

Iran’s use of cluster munitions against Israel 

In its attacks on Israel, Iran has also increasingly resorted to the use of cluster munitions which explode and scatter over many kilometers of civilian areas.

Israelis spending the night in an underground train station to avoid Iranian missiles.

The weapons are largely banned by international law – although neither Israel or Iran have signed the agreement. Nor have the United States, Russia, China and India. 

The combined potential risks of Hizbullah rockets and the widely scattered bomblets from just one Iranian missile have sent millions of Israelis into shelters multiple times a day over the past two weeks, with those in the biggest hotspots relocating underground, as well as destroying homes, damaging transport arteries – and causing a number of deaths. 

The documented use of cluster munitions by Iran, as well as other impacts of the war on civilian targets and healthcare operations in Israel, Cyprus, Turkey or other countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region are not included in the regional assessment by WHO’s EMRO regional office – because they are all members of the WHO’s European Region. 

WHO Emergency Assessments – a regional or HQ product?

When asked why WHO assessments on the ongoing Gulf War, as well as other cross-regional  events, are published solely by the EMRO region – rather than one from Headquarters, which could provide a more inclusive,. cross-regional perspective, a WHO spokesperson said that typically WHO emergency situation assessments are published by WHO’s regional offices because they are closer to the emergency at hand. 

However, that’s not always the case. For instance, African emergency issues are typically published on the WHO Headquarters Emergency site – rather than the African regional site – such as this January update on the health and humanitarian crisis triggered by the war in Sudan. 

Over the past two weeks of war, there have been over 1,885 deaths from the war according to WHO.

“The situation is terrible for the whole region and civilians are the ones suffering the most, including in the health sector,” the WHO spokesperson said.  

Image Credits: https://x.com/HananBalkhy/status/2032121759814517168/photo/1, X/Mohamed Safa@mhdksafa, Dubai Economy and Tourism Bureau., WHO/EMRO , Dubai Humanitarian , Instagram/AFP .

Rock icon Elvis Presley getting his polio vaccination in 1956, as New York City Commissioner of Health Leona Baumgartner (right) held his arm and Assistant Commissioner Harold Fuerst administered the vaccine. His public vaccination massively boosted polio immunisation.

Public health ended 2025 in one of its weakest positions in living memory – not because of a surge in disease, but because of a collapse in political, financial, and cultural support. 

Vaccination policies long considered settled science are being reversed, and industry-backed “junk science” is shaping legislation to derail proven nutrition policies. 

Even as storied public health entities are being dismantled, the tobacco industry – still responsible for eight million deaths each year – faces little resistance in its cynical PR effort to reposition itself as a champion for health. These are not isolated policy defeats. They are symptoms of a deeper problem: public health has lost its relevance in the public narrative.

For decades, harmful industries have poured billions into persuasion, addicting people to sugar, alcohol, and tobacco. Public health, meanwhile, has organized around the assumption that evidence alone can carry policy goals. 

That may have worked in an era dominated by elite opinion makers driving consensus through limited broadcast media channels and operating with institutional trust. But today’s media landscape—driven by algorithms, influencers, and coordinated narrative warfare – requires something different. 

The field isn’t losing because the science is weak; it is losing because it has treated communications as a garnish rather than as an engine for impact. While our opponents invest in persuasion as a primary tool, public health has largely disinvested in communication as a core infrastructure.

This wasn’t inevitable. Public health’s greatest victories once depended on grassroots education and mass mobilization that shaped the cultural conversation. 

In 1956, Elvis Presley’s televised polio vaccination helped skyrocket teen uptake from nearly zero to 80%. In the 1980s and ’90s, “Silence=Death” graphics and the art of Keith Haring transformed the HIV/AIDS crisis into a global movement for human rights. 

Keith Haring’s Ignorance = Fear artwork.

These moments proved that narrative power is as essential to public health as any laboratory breakthrough. And they can be again; the field of public health is poised for realignment. Here’s how it can happen:

The power of culture and influence

Evidence does not “speak” on its own; it requires a deliberate strategy to compete for attention. Industries that profit from harmful products use real-time social listening, test narrative frames the way pharmaceutical companies test molecules, and deploy influencers who reach audiences no government agency can reach. 

They communicate emotionally and strategically, aided by an unregulated attention economy in which algorithms reward outrage and accelerate falsehoods.

Public health must recognize that population health and policy follow culture, not evidence. Today, the main battleground is the “content creator economy.” 

Remarkable voices, from doctors debunking junk science to creators sharing lived experiences, are proving that health can gain traction there. These talented communicators are the modern heirs to the activist-artists of the past; with support, they could help truth compete at the scale of weaponized disinformation of both industry and grifter economy.

Communication as essential infrastructure

The path forward requires a fundamental shift in how we define public health “work.” Leaders must decide to fund communication as essential infrastructure, positioned alongside epidemiology, policy development and providing equitable access to high-quality care. This is not about one-off marketing budgets, but about building a core capability that is permanent and professionalized.

Financing is often cited as a barrier, but it is political will that is the most important resource. Many countries, cities, and states have already found practical ways to sustain this work, and these could be scaled and more explicitly tied to health. 

From health foundations and taxes on alcohol and tobacco, to reclaiming public airwaves or redirecting settlement agreements from industry litigation, mechanisms for significant funding exist.

The challenge is ensuring these resources are used to strengthen health infrastructure – including public engagement systems needed to address the harms caused by these industries. Ironically, more public visibility and engagement are win/win competencies in the battle to secure resources to better engage the public. 

Los Angeles County in the US is using some of the people they have helped to overcome health challenges to humanize health policy.

What would it look like to treat communication as core infrastructure—on par with labs, data systems, or clinical delivery? Three priorities would define the work ahead:

1. Building professional communication and community engagement capacity within health departments.

Modern public health requires full-time professional teams with the budget and authority to run campaigns at scale – comparable to the capacity currently reserved for disease surveillance. Health departments hold a unique strategic advantage: access to the authentic, local stories that humanize policy. Experience in jurisdictions like Los Angeles County shows that when health departments move beyond data dissemination and integrate narrative storytelling, they can successfully reclaim the local conversation from digital noise.

2. Integrating public health with the creator economy.

Since many of the most trusted messengers now exist outside of government, public health must develop the infrastructure to collaborate with digital creators while maintaining scientific integrity. Success in this area depends on meeting audiences where they already are. For instance, we see young people leveraging lifestyle themes, using fashion TikToks or travel videos on Instagram to effectively communicate the risks of nicotine to younger audiences who are otherwise unreachable through traditional channels.

3. Shifting from dissemination to community co-creation.

Trust is not built through top-down messaging, but through genuine dialogue. The next generation of public health initiatives must move from “targeting” communities to “shaping” work with them. This shift ensures that campaigns are not only culturally grounded but also community-owned, turning a passive audience into active participants in their own health outcomes.

Vital Strategies collaborated with the US National Black Harm Reduction Network on a campaign to make naxolone, a spray that can reverse drug overdoses, widely available.

Reclaiming the ‘public’ in public health

The fundamental truth of 2025 is that for too long public health has retreated into technical, cautious communication – messages optimized for scientific accuracy rather than for the anxieties and daily realities that shape people’s lives. 

As institutions grew quieter and more inscrutable, a communication vacuum emerged – one that the public naturally filled by turning to more responsive voices, often belonging to industries and ideologues and supercharged by platforms that reward attention and disregard truth.

Public health is facing existential challenges, and it may seem far-fetched to include prioritizing communications and public engagement among them. With a desperate shortage of resources, many argue that public health needs to trim back to what is “essential,” rather than think about doing things differently. 

There are worthy arguments about what public health must focus on delivering – global health security, universal health coverage, stronger lab systems – but none of these efforts can succeed without public approval, attention, and trust. 

Public health’s next iteration must respond to the new reality that health, social, and policy change are fundamentally rooted in public attention in a way that they never have been before.

Reversing this trajectory requires reorientation. Public health must reclaim its identity not just as a scientific enterprise, but as a mobilizing one. It must participate in shaping culture and policy – not as a byproduct of producing evidence, but as a deliberate act. 

That responsibility falls not just to governments, but to institutions, funders, and organizations committed to protecting health in the 21st century. If we want a healthier future, we must begin with a simple truth: We need to put the public back in public health.

Steve Hamill is Vice President of Policy Advocacy and Communication at Vital Strategies

Image Credits: Department of Health Collection, New York City, The Haring Foundation, LA County, You Can Save Lives.

Chula Pop Bus’ is an electrically powered bus servicing students and staff of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

The 12th Better Air Quality conference opened with a call to treat clean air as vital economic infrastructure, highlighting the large benefit-cost return – but financing clean-tech is a challenge in developing nations.

BANGKOK – Short-term impacts of bad air quality don’t just cause high economic costs but also lead to children scoring poorly in tests, warned a World Bank senior official at the opening of the Better Air Quality (BAQ) conference on Wednesday. 

The option to invest in cleaner air results in healthier people and stronger economies. Failure to do so means countries will continue to bear the costs of pollution –  in hospitals, in lost productivity, and in weakened economies, says Bindu Lohani, chair of Clean Air Asia, BAQ’s main organiser. 

A significant concern for the BAQ conference is how to increase financing for clean air action. It costs about 0.1% of regional GDP annually to roll out the most effective measures, a World Bank report estimates, while the benefit-cost ratio can be more than 9:1 for countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Lohani called on governments to treat clean air as core economic infrastructure and set targets to achieve the net-zero climate target by 2050.

By 2030, governments should significantly reduce urban particulate pollution, electrify transport systems, expand monitoring, and eliminate the most polluting fuels and practices, such as agricultural and open burning, Lohani proposed. By 2040, air quality should be fully aligned with climate policy and on a path to achieve the 2050 target. 

The World Bank’s Ann Jeanette Glauber acknowledged that tools such as emissions inventories and enforcement capacity are “essential public goods, but they aren’t sexy”. 

“There’s no ribbon cutting. Often, they don’t make money, necessarily,” Glauber said, adding that the most financially viable solution is to focus on industry.

“For us in South and Southeast Asia, the main sources of emissions are industries.  And these need clean tech boilers, furnaces, kilns and pollution control devices,” she said, adding that there were limited resources to roll these out.

Tussle over clean-tech finance

Reena Gupta (centre, with microphone), chairperson of the Punjab Pollution Control Board

Reena Gupta, chairperson of the Punjab Pollution Control Board, said there is very little money flowing into developing countries to assist with air pollution.

Citing the clean tech projects presented at her panel discussion, Gupta said that while they are excellent, they are “only pilots”. 

In Punjab in north India, most furnaces in a town known for metal recycling are still being run on coal:  “We know the clean technology exists. But it is not viable for the recycling businesses,” she said.

Gupta proposed that the international finance agencies develop mechanisms to cover risk for businesses to change to cleaner technology for the first couple of years, after which costs can be borne by the business. 

In contrast, the World Bank’s Glauber suggested that affected countries should first leverage things like their finance policies, “then investment flows…  It’s really about helping commercial finance go into those actual technologies, and you’re basically pushing them over that cost barrier so that they become financially viable.”

Citing Nepal’s example, Glauber said that the government made it far cheaper to import electric than fossil fuel vehicles. It is now one of the fastest electric vehicle markets in the world, and has the second highest electric vehicle only to Norway, in terms of electric vehicle penetration.

“You play with those [policy] levers, and then investment flows. Obviously, lots to be done in risk-sharing mechanisms that crowd-in private finance for industrial pollution control technology. That’s where the magic needs to happen,” Glauber said.

Ann Jeannette Glauber, from the World Bank’s Environment Department (South Asia).

‘Exporting air pollution’

Wealthier nations are also offloading their obsolete and polluting products in the region.

“We have had to shut down a few tyre pyrolysis units (in Punjab) that were not deploying proper air pollution control devices. Latest reports have shown that waste tyres are being sent to India from the UK and the Middle East. This is becoming a big source of black carbon, a super pollutant,” she told Health Policy Watch.

A study by philanthropic organisation Clean Air Fund (CAF) shows that measures to prevent air pollution are massively underfunded and funding does not reach populations with the highest exposure. 

Despite the 9:1 benefit-cost advantage, and despite studies that put premature deaths because of air pollution at 8.1 million in 2021, air quality solutions receive 1% of international development funding, according to CAF. This too saw a 20% decrease between 2022 and 2023. 

Bangkok is turning the tide on air pollution

The BAQ was last held in Bangkok 18 years ago. City officials say much has changed since then. Along with the economy and skyline growing, air pollution is a “visible” problem. 

“On the worst days, parents keep their children indoors, hospitals fill with patients, and the residents lose their trust that the government is doing anything at all,” says PornphromVikitsreth Techapaiboon, chief sustainability officer of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, speaking at the opening session. 

But there have been measurable improvements in the last year in reducing PM2.5 pollution, he added. The number of “orange and red’ (poor air quality) days has almost halved since 2015 and the PM2.5 concentration fell from nearly 50 micrograms per cubic metre to 37.6, a 22% decrease. 

These, he says, are “genuine turning points” and that “PM2.5-related patients have decreased in January.”

The causes of air pollution are unfavourable geography (Bangkok is in a basin), vehicular, especially diesel pollution, and biomass burning, as shown by their “dust detective” teams with experts from academia and civil society organisations. 

This has led Bangkok to create an air quality strategy, declaring itself last year to be a pollution control zone. This includes working with upwind provinces where biomass is burnt, leading to more burn-free days. It introduced a ‘green list’ for heavy trucks that are banned from Bangkok unless they can show evidence of recent maintenance. Industrial monitoring is being ramped up.

A portable air quality monitor on display at BAQ 2026 in Bangkok

Pornphrom says they’re investing in green spaces, not just for aesthetics, but as a public health intervention. PM2.5 levels inside parks are 33-43% lower than in surrounding areas. They message seven-day PM2.5 forecasts and are installing ‘clean air rooms’ in schools. 

Thailand is emerging as a test case for integrated air quality and climate investment, the conference heard. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) presented a proposed Thailand Integrated Air Quality Investment Program. 

The proposal outlines a 10-year investment platform aligned with Thailand’s PM2.5 Action Plan and forthcoming Clean Air Act, designed to bring together multiple sectors under a single framework.Priority areas include transport electrification, crop residue management, renewable energy expansion and industrial emission standards.

The ADB referenced a programme in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei in China, where coordinated action across sectors, including fuel switching, clean heating, and industrial upgrading, helped reduce PM2.5 levels by around 40% compared to 2015.

At the city level, Bangkok also highlighted the need for sustained partnerships.

“Air pollution is a complex challenge that no single city can solve alone. Sustainable air quality improvement requires long-term investment and strong international collaboration,” said Pornthep.

Image Credits: UN Thailand, Chetan Bhattacharji.

The Global Fund’s eighth replenishment faces a critical $5.36 billion shortfall, securing only $12.64 billion against its $18 billion target to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
The Global Fund’s eighth replenishment secured $12.64 billion against its $18 billion target to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Battered by a 58% cut from France, a delayed European Union (EU) pledge, and a US pullback, the Global Fund faces a significant shortfall, securing $12.64 billion against its $18 billion target during the 8th replenishment.

According to the organization, reaching the full target would have prevented roughly 400 million new AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria infections between 2027 and 2029.

Despite this compounding retreat, executive director Peter Sands praised the final tally as a “remarkable result, achieved in a challenging global context.”

Significant changes in global health financing have forced a strategic shift, introduced in late 2025, toward the poorest nations bearing the heaviest disease burdens, while placing middle-income countries on accelerated transition timelines toward national self-reliance.

“It’s our duty to steer the partnership through this period of uncertainty in a way that protects sustainability, preserves impact, and ensures that the Global Fund continues to deliver for the people and communities we serve,” said Roslyn Morauta, chair of the Global Fund Board, at the 54th Board meeting in February 2026.

To manage the Global Fund shortfall, the board approved $10.78 billion in core country allocations for the 2027-2029 implementation period. To maximize the impact of the remaining funds, the board also earmarked $260 million for “catalytic investments” designed to expand access to innovative health products.

Executive leadership stressed the urgent need to prioritize these game-changing biomedical innovations, specifically highlighting the continued scale-up of the HIV prevention tool Lenacapavir, alongside new molecular diagnostics for tuberculosis and advanced vector control tools for malaria.

French budgetary constraints compound shortfall

Driven by domestic fiscal pressure, France’s contribution to the Global Fund plummeted by 58%.
Driven by domestic fiscal pressure, France’s contribution to the Global Fund plummeted by 58%.

The Global Fund shortfall is compounded by a broader shift towards fiscal restraint and budgetary scrutiny across major Western nations. France has traditionally stood as the second-largest contributor to the institution, having regularly increased its support with successive 20% bumps during the previous two replenishment cycles.

But, as first reported by franceinfo, the state has now decided to severely slash its international health budget, reducing its financial contribution by 58% for the upcoming cycle, down from the €1.6 billion it previously provided.

In a response to a query by Health Policy Watch, the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs framed the retreat as a fiscal necessity, citing a mandate to cap the public deficit at 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2026, demanding significant budgetary efforts across all government sectors.

Despite the cut signaling a shift in priorities, the ministry stressed that these temporary financial constraints should not be interpreted as a principled retreat from multilateralism.

“The reduction in French investments in global health must be understood in this context, which in no way calls into question our commitment in this area,” stated the Quai d’Orsay in its response.

As the pledge is yet to be finalised, the French government insists that global health remains a crucial concern, with the ministry noting that health was recently confirmed as one of France’s “10 priority political objectives” for solidarity investments, specifically aimed at strengthening pandemic resilience and primary health systems.

The current intense budgetary pressure stems from the legislative instability gripping President Emmanuel Macron’s administration. After losing its parliamentary majority, the fragmented centrist government only managed to pass the 2026 budget by utilizing a special constitutional tool to bypass a standard vote.

EU caught in a budget deadlock

The EU Commission remains in a budget deadlock, delaying a multi-year pledge.
The EU Commission remains in a budget deadlock, delaying a multi-year pledge to the Global Fund despite previous announcements.

The impact of the Global Fund shortfall is exacerbated by the European Commission’s continued inability to pledge any commitments, a deadlock extending through the February 2026 board meeting.

The European bloc missed the formal November 2025 pledging summit, claiming it could not legally secure a multi-year pledge because the replenishment cycle falls between two long-term EU budgets, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). The current MFF ends 2027, the new framework from 2028-2034 is yet to be formally adopted.

According to recent budget hearings, the European Commission formulated a workaround and intended to officially pledge €700 million over a four-year span at the February board meeting. However, the Commission experienced an ongoing delay in formalizing this pledge by the time the board convened, research by Health Policy Watch confirms.

This delay comes as the European Parliament warns of severe constraints and a “very limited level of availabilities” as the bloc approaches the final year of its current 2021-2027 long-term budget.

EXCLUSIVE: EU to Pledge €700 Million to Global Fund, Less Than Previous Years

Even if this severely delayed pledge eventually materializes, stretching it over four years instead of three would represent a significant funding reduction of approximately 26.5% on an annualized basis. Furthermore, the European Commission has confirmed there will be no dedicated “health window” to ringfence budget appropriations in the upcoming long-term budget.

Other major donors had already drastically cut their contributions to the Global Fund, fundamentally altering the global health financing landscape. Driven primarily by an inward-looking “America First” political strategy, the US commitment fell from $6 billion in the seventh replenishment to just $4.6 billion in the eighth.

Private sector growth cannot counter cuts

A health worker in Gyabankrom, Ghana, prepares a malaria vaccine.
A health worker in Gyabankrom, Ghana, prepares a malaria vaccine.

Despite the shortfall from major donors, the latest replenishment cycle yielded encouraging progress from alternative sources. The global private sector and various philanthropic organizations stepped forward, successfully mobilizing $1.34 billion for the eighth replenishment.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation maintained its role as the premier private global donor by pledging $912 million. Other corporate actors stepped up to fund vital localized health initiatives, including a £6 million joint financial pledge  from GSK and ViiV Healthcare.

The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) pledged $50 million to accelerate the rollout of innovative tuberculosis diagnostics across affected regions. Goodbye Malaria also reaffirmed its leadership with a $5.5 million contribution to sustain targeted malaria elimination efforts in Eswatini, Mozambique, and South Africa.

However, while private funding sits at a record high, it cannot structurally replace the loss of sovereign anchor donors. Even with the $1.34 billion private surge, the overall replenishment total remains more than $5 billion short of the necessary goal to defeat these diseases.

African states stepping up

Demonstrating a surge in sovereign agency, several African nations have increased or maintained their Global Fund commitments, including South Africa and Nigeria.
Demonstrating a surge in sovereign agency, several African nations have increased or maintained their Global Fund commitments, including South Africa and Nigeria.

African states are stepping up, taking a larger financial stake in their health systems. Uganda maintained its previous funding levels with a $3 million pledge, which African diplomats celebrated as a powerful demonstration of the continent’s shared responsibility.

This contribution from Uganda is part of a broader, encouraging trend of African implementer-donors actively increasing their domestic financing. South Africa more than doubled its previous commitment to pledge $26.6 million, while Nigeria increased its pledge from $13.2 million to $15 million.

African diplomats have continually emphasized the critical importance of increased sovereign investment to accelerate health gains across the continent.

As the global health architecture enters this new era of austerity, the structural reliance on domestic African financing will inevitably grow. Despite the current Global Fund shortfall from the West, this emerging sovereign agency offers a resilient pathway toward long-term sustainability and equitable health outcomes.

Image Credits: WHO/Fanjan Combrink , Felix Sassmannshausen/Health Policy Watch, European Union.

Thousands of people claim that exposure to Roundup has given them cancer.

US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on “elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicide” is facing renewed scrutiny for potentially shielding a controversial weapon of war.

The order promotes the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate. Elemental phosphorus is the raw material used in white phosphorus weapons, which cause severe burns and tissue damage, and their use is controlled under international humanitarian law.

Glyphosate is the key ingredient of Roundup, the most commonly used herbicide by US agriculture. Back in 2015, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

Under the order, the US Secretary of Agriculture is directed to ensure that no government “order, rule, or regulation” threatens the “financial viability of domestic producers of either substance”. Crucially, it also grants those producers immunity under the Defense Production Act — a provision critics say could insulate manufacturers from legal accountability.

Initial reaction to the order focused on Trump’s support for glyphosate, drawing condemnation from some of the leaders of Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), the lobby group that supports US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Controversially, however, Kennedy backed Trump’s order, claiming that it safeguards America’s national security.

“Donald Trump’s Executive Order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply. We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it,” Kennedy said in a statement to CNBC.

The executive order also declares that “elemental phosphorus is a scarce material that is critical to national defense and security”, and the New York Times reports that Trump’s decision “was significantly influenced by “concerns about the availability of phosphorus for defense”.

Monsanto supplies US military

In response to the executive order, Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, said that it “will comply with this order to produce glyphosate and elemental phosphorus.”

Monsanto is the only US company that produces white phosphorus. It supplies it to the ICL Group (formerly Israel Chemicals Ltd) which sells it to the US military, where it is processed into weapons, according to Corruption Tracker, a US group that tracks corruption in the arms industry.

Last month, Monsanto, which was bought by the German company Bayer in 2018, reached a provisional $7.25 billion settlement with US law firms representing clients who claim that exposure to Roundup caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). 

The agreement covers plaintiffs exposed to Roundup before 17 February and currently have a medical diagnosis of NHL, or who receive a medical diagnosis within 16 years following the final approval of the agreement, according to an announcement from Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018.

The executive order may provide the company with protection against other legal challenges.

‘Deep, severe burns’

White phosphorus, which “ignites spontaneously in air at temperatures above 30 °C”, is extremely hard to extinguish and can cause “deep and severe burns”, according to the WHO. 

“White phosphorus is harmful to humans by all routes of exposure,” according to the WHO.

It can cause “severe deep burns” as it is “highly soluble in lipids” and can penetrate skin tissue. Its smoke harms people’s eyes and respiratory tract as phosphorus oxides dissolve in moisture to form phosphoric acids. 

Exposure can also cause “cardiovascular effects and collapse, as well as renal and hepatic damage and depressed consciousness and coma,” says the WHO. 

White phosphorus in Lebanon

White phosphorus being fired into Lebanon by Israel in 2024.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported last week that Israel had fired white phosphorus (a type of elemental phosphorus) bombs over a residential area of Yohmor, a town in southern Lebanon.

HRW has previously reported Israel’s use of white phosphorus in at least 17 municipalities in Lebanon between October 2023 and May 2024. HRW has previously documented Israel’s use of white phosphorus in Gaza in 2008-2009.

In October 2023, Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab verified that Israel’s attacks on Gaza used M825 and M825A1 projectiles labelled with the US Department of Defense (now Department of War) Identification Codes for white phosphorus-based rounds. 

White phosphorus is classified as an “incendiary weapon”, not a chemical weapon as military forces claim that they use it as a smokescreen. The use of white phosphorus is governed by Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which prohibits the use of airdropped incendiary weapons in “concentrations of civilians”. Israel is not a signatory to the convention.

Bayer’s influence in the Trump administration

A recent investigation by US Right to Know exposed extensive links between the Trump administration and Bayer, which owns Monsanto. 

It linked 22 key Trump administration staff members to Bayer’s lobbying or legal network. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and US Attorney General Pam Bondi have both been partners in Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm that  represents Bayer.

Ballard Partners founder Brian Ballard “raised more than $50 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign, and served on the 2024 inaugural and transition finance committees.”

“More than 30 senior officials at lobby firms retained by Bayer have direct ties to Trump, having worked in one or both of his administrations or political campaigns,” according to Right to Know.

Image Credits: Aljazeera, Pesticide Action Network.