Sugary drinks are significant drivers of obesity and diabetes.

At the 2025 Club World Cup, the world’s most celebrated footballers – from global icons to rising stars – are showcasing their elite athleticism and passion for the game. 

But as stars like Lionel Messi take center stage, there is one name that doesn’t belong anywhere near the pitch: Coca-Cola.  

Coca-Cola has partnered with global football body FIFA since 1978 and has been a ubiquitous presence at this year’s Club World Cup. FIFA’s football tournaments are a premier platform for showcasing health and fitness, while Coke is the largest global manufacturer of soft drinks, a top driver of the world’s twin epidemics: obesity and diabetes. Coca-Cola should not be sharing the spotlight with football players and using their achievements to “sportswash” away soda’s harms. 

It’s easy to see why not. Four of the five brands under Coke’s umbrella contain high levels of added sugar or artificial sweeteners. A single 20 oz bottle of Minute Maid Lemonade contains 67 grams of added sugar, over 100% of what a typical adult should consume in a day.

Liquid sugar is especially damaging. It causes dental caries, weight gain and increases many health risks. Our bodies don’t respond to liquid calories the same way as food calories: they do not make us feel full, leading us to consume more. 

Additionally, there’s increasing scientific evidence to suggest sugar is addictive: it affects the brain in a manner similar to cocaine and can lead to increasing intake, withdrawal and cravings.

The health harms of sugary drinks start young. Big Soda companies hook kids on their products through pervasive marketing tactics used in schools, during kids’ sports and on screens. As a result, over half of American children consume sugary drinks daily. And because dietary behaviors set in childhood track into adulthood, these early preferences set kids up for lifetimes of unhealthy eating. 

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are amongst the worst plastic polluters in the world.

Big Soda also devastates our environment. Along with PepsiCo, Coke is one of the largest plastic polluters in the world. According to the University of California, per liter, soda uses 27 times more water and produces 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions than the equivalent amount of tap water.  

Yet, Big Soda has tried to frame itself as “part of the solution.” For decades, it’s promoted physical activity as a solution to obesity, ignoring data that it’s nearly impossible to out-exercise a bad diet. Beverage companies have interfered with scientific research and professional nutritional organizations, obfuscating the true health impacts of their products. And by positioning themselves as “helpful,” they have actively fought against public policies to reduce sugary drink consumption.

Along with “sports” and “health washing,” Big Soda employs “greenwashing,” or framing damaging products as helping, not harming, the environment. At the 2024 Olympic Games, where Coca-Cola was a leading sponsor, the soda giant claimed to be an environmental champion by halving the number of plastic bottles used at previous Olympics.

 While seemingly offering nine million drinks in reuseable, returnable eco-cups, 75% of these drinks came from plastic bottles poured into eco-cups. At best, this type of “greenwashing” is misleading to consumers and at worst, threatens to exacerbate the pollution crisis.

These companies also use emotion to push product sales. Coke’s 2022 World Cup advertisement featured people from around the world celebrating amid a flurry of confetti, which outwardly has nothing to do with soda. Coke chose to capitalize on the emotions the World Cup incites: hope, joy and a sense of social connection that is increasingly rare. It profits from this emotional appeal by selling us products that are harmful for our health and planet. 

Football is bigger than ever. The 2022 FIFA World Cup drew a cumulative audience of over 5 billion, with the final alone watched by 1.5 million people. With this massive reach comes increased responsibility to engage in ethical, transparent practices that don’t cause health and environmental harm. If we expect our athletes to play fair, so should FIFA. 

But the tide is turning. The Kick Big Soda Out of Sport campaign, led by global health advocates and organizations, is mounting an opposition to Big Soda’s sports sponsorships. As the 2025 Club World Cup games are being played across the U.S., the Kick Big Soda Out movement is demanding FIFA end its partnership with Coca-Cola. Over 350,000 people, alongside 97 health and environmental organizations have already pledged their support. 

The spotlight isn’t only on the players—it’s on FIFA too. Will it continue to hijack the global stage for profit, or will it take a stand for the health of fans, players and the planet? 

The facts are clear. It’s time to ban Big Soda in sport. 

Lindsey Smith Taillie, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a nutrition epidemiologist focused on designing and evaluating healthy food policies.

 

Image Credits: Vital Strategies.

 

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Raul Thomas, the Assistant Director-General for Business Operations at the World Health Assembly in May, where member states approved a stripped-down $4.2 billion budget for 2026-27 – for which the agency is still short $1.7 billion in funds.

The World Health Organization has reduced its global headcount by about 221 people since January, down to 9,231 as compared to 9452 at the start of January – largely through a termination of temporary contracts and a freeze in renewals. 

Most of the cutbacks have been at the Geneva Headquarters, WHO’s largest office, where 2,938 positions in January 2025, shrunk to about 2,782 as of July.

Cuts in staff from January – July 2025 at WHO’s Geneva Headquarters.

Another 194 staff worldwide are expected to leave in coming weeks, due to voluntary retirement and initial separations, according to a presentation made by senior WHO officials to staff at a global “Town Hall” on Thursday. 

But this remains a drop in the bucket of what is likely to come next – with potential retrenchment of some 20% of staff globally, and even more at headquarters, according to previous WHO modeling estimates.

Even after the initial $150-165 million in payroll savings as well as another $140-260 million in travel and procurement cuts this year – the Organization still needs to reduce spending by another $390-490 million by year’s end in order to meet a $4.2 billion budget target for the 2026-2027 biennium. 

And that $4.2 billion two-year budget also remains underfunded – with an estimated $1.7 billion revenue gap as of May. 

Macro view of the $800 million budget cut needed to reach the new $4.2 billion budget target for 2026-2027 – providing that money can in fact be raised.

After Headquarters, WHO’s African Region has the largest number of staff positions – and also faces the largest salary gap for 2025, according to other previously published data.  But it, along with several other WHO regions, has hardly begun the retrenchment process, to date – even though new organizational plans have by now been designed. The AFRO headcount has declined by a mere 47 people – from 2,561 in January to 2,514 as of July, data shared at the meeting Thursday indicated. 

Salary gap by region for 2025 as presented to WHO member states in March, shows more than half of the deficit is in headquarters.

In the case of the WHO Regional Office of the Americas/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), decisions on staff cuts remain formally suspended until September – by which time the Trump administration is expected to make a final decision on whether it will continue to fund PAHO, which it co-founded over a century ago. PAHO  operates as a semi-autonomous entity from WHO -with a separate governing body and a budget 70% funded by member states in the Americas region.

The decision of the United States, WHO’s largest donor, to withdraw from the WHO global entity in January, didn’t technically apply to PAHO, whose relationship with the US is being deliberated separately in Washington DC.  

Hard work begins – mapping and matching rank and file staff

On 1 July, WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the appointment of 36 directors at the Geneva Headquarters to oversee a consolidated set of programme departments – whose numbers have been slashed by nearly half.  See related story. 

EXCLUSIVE: WHO Chief Names New Team of Directors – Mostly Familiar Faces

At Thursday’s Town Hall, Tedros and senior management also unveiled the first concrete set of proposals to move some WHO/Geneva teams and departments to other, less expensive locations.

Those include the relocation of: some Health Emergencies functions to Dubai; laboratory surveillance to WHO pandemic surveillance hub in Berlin; and certain financial and Human Resources functions to Lyon, France, where WHO already has an office. A series of staff consultations will now take place on the plan, before a final decision is made, the WHO leadership said.

Relocation of key offices – proposals to be discussed with WHO staff in coming weeks.

Following these moves, however, the really hard work is beginning to map positions at department level – and then “map” existing staff.

Against this massive challenge, many staff seem unclear about how strategically linked-up the new department organization is to WHO strategic priorities, to date. 

In WHO’s Geneva Headquarters, for instance, some staff expressed concerns that the traditional “vertical” infectious disease departments would still fare better than departments covering a wide range of less well-funded topics, such as noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)- which nonetheless represent the majority of the world’s disease burden today. 

“I’m worried that there won’t be a fresh look at priorities in line with the General Programme of Work,” one staff member observed, noting that the first two priorities of the GPW are 1) climate change response and 2) so-called environmental and lifestyle risks that are the “root causes” of ill health. 

 

At present, such priorities are not well reflected in current WHO staffing balances, another scientist observed:

“For instance, TB, alone, is a department of about 55 staff; HIV, Hepatitis and other Sexually Transmitted Infections also has roughly 55 staff and consultants – and at the same time, you have GAVI, UNAIDS and The Global Fund covering many of these same priorities.”  

“In the NCDs team, on the other hand, you have about 50 staff. But they deal with all of the major NCDs that represent 74% of the world’s disease burden, including  cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, cancers, oral and eye health, as well as disability and rehabilitation.”

Another concern that has been raised is the merging of WHO’s departments on health workforce and nursing with the new WHO Academy, a flagship project of Tedros’ based in Lyon, France.  While the Academy has been welcomed as a means of standardising hundreds of learning platforms produced by WHO and making them more accessible to health workers worldwide, there are fears that the organization could step away from other burning issues such as health workforce migration from poor to rich countries, the quest for better pay and recognition, physical risks and burnout – not to mention the drastic shortage in health workers.

“We are deeply concerned that the proposed structural changes at WHO risk stalling — or even reversing — progress on strengthening and investing in the nursing and health workforce,” Howard Catton, CEO of the International Council of Nurses told Health Policy Watch.

“While the WHO Academy’s focus on lifelong learning is valuable, it does not encompass the breadth of workforce interventions needed to address the current global shortfall of 6 million nurses — and projected 11 million health worker gap by 2030.

“WHO rightly reminds us that nurses and other health workers are the backbone of health systems. These vital functions must not be relegated to mere metatarsals in the global health response if we are to realise the vision of health for all.”

In WHO’s European Region giving up on communicable diseases and cancer?  

Macro view of the new European Regional Office structure with three main programme divisions overall, and Health Security absorbing key disease control actitivities including AMR.

Meanwhile, some staff in WHO’s European region voiced somewhat different concerns.  

In contrast to headquarters, where infectious and noncommunicable dieseases (NCDs) are now part of the same division, most of the EURO regions’s infectious disease teams, as well as AMR, have been dismantled and merged into the Region’s Health Security division – which traditionally focused on emergencies.

“The current proposed organigram eliminates dedicated, unique units, and teams in HIV, TB and viral hepatitis and anti-microbial resistance,” one EURO team member, who asked to remain anonymous, noted. 

“The fact that communicable diseases have been shrunk, this is a major strategic pitfall, and goes against the European Programme of Work,” the staff member added, noting the high rates of TB, HIV and hepatitis in the EURO Region’s eastern and central Asian member states. 

“It also eliminates teams in cancer, cardiovascular disease and metabolic diseases,” the team member noted. 

“I think the worrying, the worrying aspect is some of these are actually, if you take, for example, cardiovascular disease, cancer and AMR, these are diseases that kill the most based on the data we have. And they will become bigger and bigger health challenges. 

“So the organization is either completely dropping or downsizing the effort and investment on this, on these topics, while at the same time keeping a very big Emergencies Programme, which also seems to be the one that had the highest deficit.”  

In response, a WHO European Region Spokesperson told Health Policy Watch, that the decisions emerged out of EURO’s own “reprioritization” process, guided by the  global WHO process, the second European Programme of Work, and the platform upon which Regional Director Hans Kluge was re-elected last year.

“WHO/Europe is facing a severe budgetary and financial challenge, including a 15% budget reduction for the next biennium ($US 55 million),” the spokesperson said. “Given the financial constraints, difficult decisions are being made about what to prioritize and where to scale back. Staff have been involved throughout — through town hall meetings, ongoing feedback, and input from newly appointed divisional directors. Member States of the Region have also been kept informed at key points, most recently at the July meeting of the Regional Committee’s Standing Committee and at today’s global Member States briefing.”

BCG and the consultancy conundrum 

Notes: Includes FTEs for APWs and Consultants; Assumes each SSA is a FTE because no other equivalent is provided in the HR reports.

Along with staff cuts, senior WHO officials said that they are cutting back on contracts for consultants but without presenting any supporting data on that measurement. The number of consultants has swelled exponentially, pushing out regular staff positions in many case.  However, without further former disclosures, concrete data on actual consultancy numbers  is only likely to become available at the end December, when the bi-annual public HR database is updated. 

Meanwhile, WHO officials did not deny that a new $4.295 million contract with the Boston Consulting Group to support the next phases of the global reorganization, is pending in WHO’s global management system, as per an exclusive Health Policy Watch report, published Wednesday.   

WHO’s head of business operations, Raul Thomas, said that the Organization is re-evaluating the pending contract in light of recent news reports about the involvement of two former BCG staff with the highly controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food distribution scheme as well as another Gaza population relocation plan. 

“Indeed, this has come to our attention, and we are having discussions with BCG. We are very alarmed at what we have read. They are having an external review,” Thomas said. “And between now, and I would say the end of next week, the organization will take a decision on whether or not we’ll proceed with engaging with BCG.

“But it is under careful consideration,” he said, adding that senior management were “alarmed” about the reports that appeared to be in “contravention of the values of the organization.” 

At the same time, other staff have said that regardless of reputational issues at stake, large and expensive consultancy contracts divert resources from the funding of staff positions – in a setting where every $1 million spent on external consultancies could fund 3-5 rank-and-file WHO staff for about a year. See related story here:

EXCLUSIVE: WHO Has a New $4.2 million Contract Pending with Boston Consulting Group

-Updated 13.07.2025 with reactions from the International Council of Nurses and WHO’s European Regional Office.

Image Credits: WHO Town Hall, 10 July , WHO , https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/about-us/general-programme-of-work/who-strategy-2025-2028-at-a-glance.pdf?sfvrsn=de60054d_3, WHO, European Region .

Luyengo Clinic in Eswatini. PEPFAR funded 80% of the clinic’s running cost, and the HIV treatment of 3,000 people is now in jeopardy.

An additional six million new HIV infections and four million AIDS-related deaths could occur between 2025 and 2029 if US-supported HIV treatment and prevention services collapse, according to UNAIDS.

“This is not just a funding gap. It’s a ticking time bomb,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima at the launch of the organisation’s 2025 global AIDS update on Thursday. 

“We have seen services vanish overnight. Health workers have been sent home. And people – especially children and key populations – are being pushed out of care.” 

“Key populations” refer to people most vulnerable to HIV infection, including sex workers, men to have sex with men, people who inject drugs and young women.

Some of the immediate effects of the US withdrawal of funds since Donald Trump assumed the presidency in January include the closure of health facilities, healthworker job losses, and disrupted treatment, testing and prevention services.

Impact of aid cuts on HIV infections and deaths

The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) had committed $4.3 billion in bilateral support in 2025 and “those services were stopped overnight when the US government shifted its foreign assistance strategies,” notes the UNAIDS report. 

PEPFAR had supported HIV testing for 84.1 million people and HIV treatment for 20.6 million people.

“Disruptions are being felt across the HIV response and pose a huge risk of increased mortality, a surge of new HIV infections, and the development of resistance to the most commonly used treatment regimens.”

In Mozambique, for example, over 30,000 health personnel have lost their jobs.

UNAIDS itself faces huge job losses, and is reducing its Geneva head office staff from 127 to a mere 19 employees, according to a report this week by Geneva Solutions.

The UN agency’s restructuring plan will cut staff by 54% globally, leaving 280 staff worldwide. 

HIV prevention programmes hit hard

Country reliance on aid for HIV prevention.

External funding financed almost 80% of HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa, 66% in the Caribbean and 60% in the Middle East and North Africa, according to UNAIDS.

PEPFAR alone reached 2.3 million adolescent girls and young women with comprehensive HIV prevention services in 2024 and enabled 2.5 million people to use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Many of these programmes have now stopped completely, according to UNAIDS. 

PrEP involves taking medication to prevent HIV infection and is usually taken by people at high risk of infection, and PEPFAR funded over 90% of PrEP initiations globally in 2024.

“Countries are reporting limited availability of PrEP and reduced activities to prevent new HIV acquisitions, including among adolescent girls and young women,” said UNAIDS.

In Nigeria, budget cuts have reduced PrEP initiation from 40,000 to 6000 people per month.

At the end of 2024, just before a sudden collapse in funding, new HIV infections had been reduced by 40% and AIDS-related deaths by 56% since 2010, Byanyima notes in the report. Countries had also reduced the annual number of children acquiring HIV from their mothers by 62% to 120,000 since 2010.

However, prevention efforts were already flatlining before the withdrawal of US aid. In 2024, there were 1.3 million new infections, which was almost the same as the year before.

“Over 210,000 girls and young women aged 15 to 24 acquired HIV in 2024 – an average of 570 new infections every day,” according to the UNAIDS report.

In 2024, 630,000 people died from AIDS-related causes, 61% of them in sub-Saharan Africa. “Community-led services, which are vital to reaching marginalised populations, are being defunded at alarming rates,” said UNAIDS.

“In early 2025, over 60% of women-led HIV organisations surveyed had lost funding or were forced to suspend services.”

Domestic budgets inadequate

Only 25 of the 60 low- and middle-income countries included in the report have increased their domestic budgets for HIV in 2026. The average increase amounts to 8%, approximately $180 million in additional domestic resources. 

“This is promising, but not sufficient to replace the scale of international funding in countries that are heavily reliant,” UNAIDS notes.

“It is important for donors to recognize that the option of increasing domestic HIV funding is not immediately or equally available to all countries,” UNAIDS notes.

“Combinations of debt distress, slow economic growth and underperforming tax systems leave many countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, with limited fiscal space to increase their domestic funding for HIV. “

It cites the recent International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville in Spain, as offering a way forward with “calls for debt relief, international tax cooperation and reform of international financial institutions”.

These measure would provide “the first steps towards a new economic settlement that can give countries the fiscal space needed to invest in the global HIV response”, UNAIDS notes.

“Urgent action and revived solidarity are needed to sustain the progress made and prevent a resurgence of HIV.”

Image Credits: UNAIDS.

Dr Joanne Liu, a veteran humanitarian and former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has seen the front lines of global health crises—from Ebola in West Africa to bombed-out hospitals in Afghanistan. But her message today is clear: “An imperfect solution is better than no solution.”

Speaking on the Global Health Matters podcast, Liu reflected on the values that shaped her career, the lessons learned during her years at MSF, and her call for renewed global solidarity.

“Young people come into my ER and tell me they don’t want to live any more,” she said. “They feel trapped in a cruel and unfair world. I want to convince them it’s better to fight than give up.”

In her new book, Ebola, Bombs, and Migrants, Liu recounts how fear and political interests often override humanitarian needs. She recalled how the world ignored West Africa’s Ebola crisis until the virus reached Europe and the U.S.

“States don’t have friends—they have interests,” she said.

Liu also discussed the devastating U.S. airstrike on MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed 42 people.

“We called everyone—the Pentagon, the UN—but no one stopped it,” she said.

The attack pushed MSF to campaign for stronger protections for medical missions.

Liu is now focused on shifting the power dynamics within global health.

“For every international staff member, there are nine or ten locally hired,” she said. “We need to rebalance who holds influence.”

Despite setbacks, Liu remains hopeful.

“There is beauty everywhere,” she said. “It’s action that brings hope, and hope that brings action.”

Listen to more episodes of the Global Health Matters podcast on Health Policy Watch.

Image Credits: Global Health Matters podcast.

Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly in May, where WHO member states approved a stripped-down base budget of $4.2 billion for the next two years (2026-27).

The World Health Organization has a draft $4.295 million contract with the Boston Consulting Group pending in its Global Management System (GSM), Health Policy Watch has learned – even while Save the Children has suspended its connection to BCG, over the reported involvement of two former staff members in the development of controversial projects in Gaza.

If approved and executed, the new WHO contract would be the second one in six months to be awarded to BCG. 

Some $2,849,745 was spent by WHO on the Boston-based consultancy between 7 April and 15 May, according to GSM records seen by Health Policy Watch – to support the first phase of WHO’s massive restructuring. 

The WHO reorganization has been triggered by the January withdrawal of WHO’s largest donor, the United States, and a subsequent budget crisis that left a $1.7 billion hole in WHO’s planned $4.2 billion base budget [not including emergencies] for the next two years (2026-2027). 

The initial BCG consultancy was disclosed by Health Policy Watch in April, after it was discussed at a WHO ‘Town Hall’ convened by senior management. At the time, WHO Staff Association President Catherine Kirorei Corsini told WHO colleagues that the consultancy was being financed by “voluntary and earmarked funding from Bill and Melinda Gates….  And this because it’s voluntary and earmarked, it cannot be used for anything else.” Her remarks were confirmed later by a WHO spokesperson.

Continuation of a second phase

Oropouche mosquito monitoring
Sampling disease-carrying mosquitos in Latin America; fears that pending budget cuts will gut the rank and file WHO staff first of all.

But according to the terms of reference attached to the first BCG contract, seen by Health Policy Watch, the $2.849 million consultancy that ran from 7 April-15 May, was only “Phase 1”,  to be followed by a longer and larger Phase 2 that would further “implementation” of HR restructuring “to support long-term strategic objectives” as well as support “procurement savings to maximize cost-efficiency.”

Should that second contract for $4.295 million be approved, that would make for a massive $7.144 million in consultancy awards to the firm over a period of less than a year. 

Asked to comment on the pending continuation of the work to a second phase, the amounts involved, or the issues around the past activities of BCG staff or former staff in Gaza, WHO did not respond as of publication time. 

BCG also did not respond to queries by Health Policy Watch. 

However, regardless of reputational issues, WHO staff have also questioned why the organization should be spending millions on external consultants to advise on its reorganization – at a time when its also facing massive staff cuts. 

Save the Children suspension

Save the Children Clinic in Deir al Balah, northern Gaza. The organization has a network of humanitarian operations across the war-torn enclave.

On Tuesday, Save the Children reportedly “suspended” its decades-long relationship with BCG, citing “utterly unacceptable” work on Gaza-related projects – including a plan to relocate about a quarter of Gaza Palestinians out of the enclave following a cease-fire, a decision reported by The New Humanitarian. 

“We suspended our work with BCG on June 13 and we are now awaiting the outcome of their review,” Save the Children spokesperson Belinda Goldsmith was quoted saying in an email to TNH on 8 July.  

Save the Children’s decision followed a report last Friday by the Financial Times that BCG had “modeled” the costs of relocating Palestinians out of Gaza as part of a politically controversial post-war reconstruction plan. 

Earlier in June, the FT also reported that BCG staff had also been involved in the early stages of planning for the conflict-plagued Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The Israeli and US-supported entity that began distributing food aid in Gaza last month tried to sidestep UN aid channels, but soon became mired in controversy as hundreds of Palestinians were killed traveling to and from the Foundation’s four distribution sides  over the past several weeks.   

In an 8 July email to all staff, Save the Children International CEO Inger Ashing referred to the FT’s reporting on BCG’s involvement with the controversial GHF and  “modelling a plan to forcibly relocate Palestinians from Gaza”  as “utterly unacceptable”, TNH reported. 

“Following that, we suspended all ongoing work with BCG pending the outcome of their external investigation and asked all Member teams to do the same,” wrote Ashing, to national-level Save the Children organisations. 

BCG has repudiated its connection to controversial Gaza projects 

Only the most able-bodied can run the gauntlet to reach Gaza’s food distribution points, which include four GHF outposts and scattered UN delivery points.

In a response dubbed “correcting the record” Sunday, 6 July, BCG said that two former partners had engaged secretly in a Gaza post-conflict evacuation cost assessment – without BCG’s knowledge.   

“Recent media reporting has misrepresented BCG’s role in post-war Gaza reconstruction,” BCG stated. “Two former partners initiated this work, even though the lead partner was categorically told not to. This work was not a BCG project. It was orchestrated and run secretly outside any BCG scope or approvals. We fully disavow this work. BCG was not paid for any of this work.

As for the earlier work in relation to the GHF, BCG said that:  “In October 2024, a BCG team from the U.S., led by two partners, provided pro bono support to help establish an aid organization intended to operate alongside other relief efforts to deliver humanitarian support to Gaza. They failed to disclose the full nature of the work. These individuals then carried out subsequent unauthorized work. 

“Their actions reflected a serious failure of judgment and adherence to our standards.

“We are shocked and outraged by the actions of these two partners. They have been exited from the firm. BCG disavows the work they undertook. It has been stopped, and BCG has not and will not be paid for any of their work.

“We are acting with urgency and seriousness to learn from this and to ensure it does not happen again,” BCG added. “We deeply regret that in this situation we did not live up to our standards. We are committed to living our values—with accountability for our failures and humility in how we move forward.”

Image Credits: Wikipedia , WHO/Pierre Albouy, PAHO/WHO, Save the Children , X/Channel 4 .

A trial participant is prepared for a blood test as part of a trial of new TB drugs that can overcome drug resistant pathogens. Several HIV and TB trials were suspended following recent changes in US policy.

Human trials conducted outside the United States with funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) halted by the Trump administration in May, may be permitted to continue.

On 1 May, the NIH outlawed US researchers from making subawards to foreign research partners, jeopardising billions of dollars of research throughout the world. As a result, some clinical trials on humans were halted midway despite dangers to trial participants and the huge waste of money.

However, the payment freeze to several NIH subawardees in South Africa was recently lifted, according the journal, Science, which reported that “an alternative payment scheme … could allow those studies to continue”.

Over the past two decades, South Africa has become a “preferred site” for HIV and tuberculosis research, both because of its high burden of HIV and TB and the excellence of its scientific community, according to Professor Ntobeko Ntusi, head of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC).

It has been disproportionately affected by the NIH’s change in policy towards subawards, which jeopardised at least 27 HIV trials and 20 TB trials, according to an analysis by the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

In 2024, the NIH funded about 3,600 foreign subawards worth more than $400 million, according to Science.

The NIH wants to control allocations to foreign research groups, stipulating that they will need to apply directly to NIH for grants, not go via third parties. However, it will only have the new award procedures in place by 30 September, leaving thousands of research projects in limbo.

Explaining its position in an announcement on 1 May, the NIH said that it wants to “maintain strong, productive, and secure foreign collaborations” and  “ensure it can transparently and reliably report on each dollar spent”.

As a result, NIH “is establishing a new award structure that will prohibit foreign subawards from being nested under the parent grant. This new award structure will include a prime with independent awards that are linked to the prime that will allow NIH to track the project’s funds individually,” according to the announcement.

However, it now appears to have made exceptions for clinical trials involving people in the interim. 

“Staff guidance dated 30 June maintains that grant renewal and new applications including a foreign subaward submitted after 1 May will not be reviewed until the new tracking system is in place,” according to Science.

“But the document describes an exception for human subject research in applications submitted earlier, and for ongoing human studies. As a temporary measure, NIH grants staff can convert the subawards within these projects to special ‘supplements’ to the main grant that will go directly to the foreign collaborator, the document says.”

NIH official Michelle Bulls informed grants staff in a memo on 27 June that, although no new awards can be made to South Africa, “existing subawards with clinical research can continue under the new ‘supplement’ plan… and ongoing prime awards to South African researchers, which make up about 100 of the country’s NIH grants, ‘may proceed’,” according to Science.

Prof Ian Sanne, co-principal investigator of the Wits HIV Research Group Clinical Trials Unit, earlier described navigating the US funding cuts as a “major regulatory and ethics nightmare”.

One of the studies Sanne oversaw that was terminated involved a trial of microbicide rings filled with slow-release antiretroviral medication to prevent HIV that were inserted vaginally in trial participants, many of whom were at high risk of HIV infection.

However, restarting the research is not a simple matter as, in the two-month pause in NIH payments, trial participants have dispersed and research staff have been retrenched.  In addition, there is no guarantee that current subawards will qualify for awards under the new system.

NIH targets journal fees

Meanwhile, the NIH announced this week that it was cracking down on “excessive publisher fees for publicly funded research”.

The NIH claimed that “some major publishers charge as much as $13,000 per article for immediate open access, while also collecting substantial subscription fees from government agencies. 

“For example, one publishing group reportedly receives more than $2 million annually in subscription fees from NIH, in addition to tens of millions more through exclusive article processing charges (APCs). These costs ultimately burden taxpayers who have already funded the underlying research.”

In 2026, the NIH will introduce a cap on “allowable publication costs” (APC) to ensure that  publication fees “remain reasonable across the research ecosystem”. 

“This policy marks a critical step in protecting the integrity of the scientific publishing system while ensuring that public investments in research deliver maximum public benefit,” said NIH director Dr Jay Bhattacharya.

Image Credits: TB Alliance.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Israeli legal scholar and womens’ rights advocate at the briefing.

A team of Israeli team of experts in law and gender have called on the United Nations to hold Hamas accountable for systematic use of sexual violence during attacks on Israeli communities near Gaza on 7 October, 2023, and in the course of holding some 251 Israelis and foreigners hostage over subsequent months. 

Speaking at a briefing with Geneva’s UN press corps on Wednesday, leading figures with The Dinah Project said the UN should outlaw, or blacklist, Hamas for using sexual violence, “as a tactical weapon of war” – while international courts should prosecute Hamas figures said to have led or carried out the violence.

“The hope is to… set the historical record straight and to have it affirmed by as many organizations as possible, and building upon this, continue also on the international political level, said Ruth Halperin-Kaddari,” a noted Israeli legal scholar and women’s rights advocate. She added. “We are hoping that the Secretary General will indeed follow on and blacklist Hamas.”  

A new report by the project, released Tuesday, cites at least 15 separate cases of sexual assault, including at least four instances of gang rape and other cases of genital mutilation, followed by the killing of the victims after their assault, during the 7 October attacks by Hamas gunmen, said Halperin-Kaddari, a lead author of the report. Nearly 1200 people died in the early morning Hamas assault on Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip and young festival goers at the Nova music festival. 

Israeli Nova festival goers flee Hamas gunmen on the morning of 7 October, 2023; some were captured, raped and killed or raped, witnesses say.

Over a dozen former Israeli hostages have also testified that they either experienced first hand, or witnessed, various forms of sexual assault – including sexual violence, forced nudity, verbal sexual harassment and threats of forced marriage, the report found. 

The highly technical report by the team of Israeli legal experts also calls for a broader set of evidentiary  principles to govern the prosecution of sexual violence during conflicts more generally – saying that the direct testimony of wartime sexual violence victims is often impossible to collect – as many of them are subsequently killed.  

“Most victims were permanently silenced — either murdered during or after the assaults or remain too traumatized to talk — creating unique evidentiary challenges,” the report stated. 

So cases need to rely not only upon the victims’ own testimony, but the evidence of witnesses and forensic evidence. And when a pattern of systematic violence is identified, not only individual perpetrators, but the leadership of an armed group should also be held to account.    

“If we use the regular criminal law paradigm, the result is impunity.  You cannot actually point to a specific attacker, who attacked a specific victim,” said Nava Ben-Or, a retired Israeli judge, at the briefing.  “We need to a mass atrocity [section of] criminal law, which will enable the justice system to bring these perpetrators to justice.”

The report by the independent NGO was supported by the UK government as well as a variety of Israeli-and Jewish-affiliated foundations.

Report builds upon UN fact-finding mission

Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, briefs journalists in New York in March 2024.

The project builds upon a report by a UN fact-finding mission last year, following a 17-day visit by Pramilla Patten, UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence and Conflict, to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Her report found “reasonable grounds” to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence occured during the 7 October Hamas onslaught.  There was also “clear and convincing” that hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were subjected to sexual violence, Patten said in a subsequent press release. 

Since Patten’s report, more Israeli hostages have been released from Gaza including some who relayed new evidence about sexual violence that they experienced directly, or witnessed, including some men as well as women, the Dinah Project’s authors note.   

Hamas did not comment immediately on the report.  

However, through the course of the grueling 21 month war, there have also been UN and Israeli media reports of sexualized forms of violence perpetuated by Israel against Palestinian detainees, particularly in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison.

And earlier this year, a report by a UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, asserted that gender-based and sexual violence, including forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment.. and sexual assault” were “standard operating procedure” of Israeli Security Forces toward Palestinians – allegations that Israel “categorically” rejected. 

Calls for a new standard for prosecuting sexual violence in the context of conflicts

“I do not have any credence to opine what I think about, what my government is doing or not doing in Gaza,” said Halperin-Kaddari, in response to a reporter’s query about the broader charges that have since been levied against Israel for genocidal actions in Gaza since 7 October – including constant military attacks within civilian “safe zones” and restrictions on the entry of food, medicines and other humanitarian aid, as well as fuel and water.

“We are not the government… This report is an independent work of academia, experts. …  There were victims and they were not recognized. And Hamas is still viewed by too many organizations, too many countries, too many entities, including human rights entities…as part of the international human rights community, and hearing their silence….I take it as a total failure of the international human rights system,” Halperin-Kaddari added. “We demand that they come to terms with the realization that Hamas are deplorable as using the worst kind of crime against humanity of sexual violence in war.”

The Dinah Project leaders said that they also want to convey a universal message condemning sexual and gender-based violence in conflict settings. 

“We established the Dinah Project to take action, not only regarding October 7 victims, but also around the world,” said Sharon Zagagi Pinhas, a former chief military prosecutor, at the briefing.

 “And we aim to influence protocols and procedures around the world in different arenas, and the problems that and the challenges that we identified on October 7 are the same challenges that we identify in other places around the world. 

“It’s not just an Israeli initiative. It’s an initiative that is intended to continue and also to seek ways to help also victims, but also systems and organizations in finding ways to achieve accountability in cases of conflict related sexual violence around the world.

Added Halperin Kaddari, “We have already started… to establish working relationships and contacts with other sister organizations, whether it is Yazidi women or women in Ukraine. There is already an umbrella chain of organizations that work on the same field, which we are part of, and we will certainly develop this outreach to other areas.

“But we focus on the legal framework and on the legal theory. … And unfortunately, there is a universal need, and our message is indeed universal.” 

Image Credits: X/via Israel Ha Yom, UN News .

A researcher collects information on pathogens during a disease outbreak. How such information is shared in a fair and equitable way is the next phase of the pandemic agreement talks.

The next – and tricky – phase of cementing the World Health Organization’s pandemic agreement resumes on Wednesday (9 July) with the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG).

The IGWG’s main task is to negotiate an annex to the pandemic agreement on a pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS) system. This system will set out how information about pathogens with pandemic potential is shared in a safe, transparent and accountable manner, and how those who share information will benefit from products that are developed as a result.

It is a hot potato given tensions between intellectual property rights for pharmaceutical companies and wide access to affordable medical products.

In addition, the IGWG will prepare the ground for the Conference of the Parties that will govern the pandemic agreement, and the terms of reference for a coordinating financial mechanism, which will help defend countries against outbreaks and pandemics.

According to WHO legal officer Steven Solomon, the PABS annex has to be completed by 17 April 2026 to meet the deadline of submission to the World Health Assembly in May 2026.

This means that the IGWG has merely nine months and eight days to complete its work to meet the deadline.

This week’s meeting will be dedicated to electing the office-bearers, setting out timelines and modalities for engagement with relevant stakeholders.

The first item on the IGWG agenda is the election of two co-chairs and four vice-chairs – one for each of the six WHO regions. As with the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) that ran the pandemic agreement talks, the co-chairs are to reflect developing and developed countries.

IGWG co-chair contender, the UK’s Dr Mathew Harpur.
IGWG co-chair contender, Brazil’s Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes

Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes, Brazil’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva, and Dr Mathew Harpur, Deputy Director for Multilateral and G7/G20 Engagement for the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, are strong contenders for co-chairs, according to sources.

The INB co-chairs, France’s Ambassador Anne-Claire Amprou and South Africa’s Precious Matsoso, are passing the baton to new leaders, although the pandemic agreement that they oversaw contains the outline of the PABS system.

Addressing a recent meeting in Geneva, Amprou said that preparatory work for the implementation of the pandemic agreement should start as soon as possible, in parallel with negotiations on the annex.

Amprou added that she though that the annex should be a short document and that “this negotiation should be much more technical than political [as] we know the political positions of different member states”.

As with INB meetings, open sessions of the IGWG will be webcast and stake-holders in official relations with the WHO will be permitted to attend and contribute at certain times.

Image Credits: Wildlife Conservation Society .

An anti-smoking campaign in China, the biggest consumer of tobacco products.

As the tobacco industry continues to innovate to preserve its market appeal, the health sector needs to become even more creative – advocating for new regulations to reduce tobacco’s appeal and increase product costs. Among those: limiting nicotine content, banning filter tips, and joining WHO’s new “3×35 initiative” to raise the price of tobacco products by 50%. 

We’re on the brink. For much of the last 20 years, smoking has been in decline worldwide, saving millions of lives, but we are at an inflection point. Trends point to a flattening in the decline of cigarette sales, and Big Tobacco is responding to two decades of public health progress with insidious innovation. If public health practitioners don’t out-innovate the industry now, we’ll be setting ourselves up to lose.

It is a monumental public health achievement that global tobacco use dropped by a third in the last 20 years. More than 5.5 billion people are now covered by some measure that discourages tobacco use, such as advertising bans, higher taxes and quit programs. For the first time, an entire region, Latin America, has smoke-free laws in place.

But we cannot expect the hard-won anti-tobacco laws of today – those that have created smoke-free spaces, banned advertisements around schools and removed flavors from cigarettes which have saved millions of lives – to protect us from the industry’s plans for tomorrow.

Despite its seemingly anti-cigarette rhetoric, the industry is not slowing down on its core product – monetizing addiction. There are too many signals to ignore: Philip Morris International shipped more cigarettes in the first quarter of 2025 than during the same period last year. British American Tobacco just launched a new cigarette brand in Korea. Japan Tobacco International is building a new factory in Morocco.

Industry is innovating around anti-smoking regulations 

Tobacco industry innovation includes a barrage of new tobacco products.

The industry is also innovating its way around current anti-smoking regulations, releasing a barrage of new products like e-cigarettes (vapes), heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches. When laws threaten to restrict or ban these addictive products, tobacco companies try to influence politicians to advocate for them, often as the “lesser evil”. 

These products are increasingly being targeted at the next generation. The industry has lobbied for heated tobacco products to be exempt from the UK’s new Tobacco and Vapes Bill so they can continue to be sold to people who would no longer be able to buy cigarettes. It also wants to continue promoting these products in a wide range of retail outlets, which has included items at children’s eye-level, near sweets in filling stations. 

Meanwhile, there are reports from across the UK of nicotine pouch giveaways at railway stations and tobacco companies sponsoring music events like the Reading and Leeds Festival, where many teens go to celebrate the end of exams.

If nothing is done to counter the industry’s strategies, not only will declines in smoking be reversed, but new epidemics will arise. Indeed, an e-cigarette epidemic already has, with vapes being used more by teens than adults in many countries. We’re risking a future where the next generation won’t have the same protections.

Out-innovating big tobacco 

But tobacco companies aren’t the only ones innovating. New ideas are emerging that can move the needle in the right direction, for good. 

We can require that cigarettes have less nicotine, so that fewer people get hooked for life. We can use technology to blur out tobacco company logos and branding in Formula 1 races, as in France, and address imagery on streaming platforms, like in India. 

We can institute “polluter pays” penalties where tobacco companies compensate for the environmental damage their products cause, like in Spain. We could ban filters to remove a product design element that makes it easier to smoke and eliminate the most littered single-use plastic in the world. We can prohibit the youngest generations from ever being allowed to buy tobacco.

These solutions can be agile and deployed at the national, provincial or city level. The generational end game law, which makes it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born after a certain date, is being pioneered at the city level in Brookline, Massachusetts, in the United States. A similar law is set to go into effect in the UK soon.

To prevent a backslide into the era of smoke-filled rooms and Joe the Camel, these solutions need to be accelerated and supported in every country.

So there couldn’t have been a better time for the tobacco control community to gather than at the recent World Tobacco Conference in Dublin, Ireland. 

Experts and advocates from around the world convened in a country that itself is wrestling with stalled declines in tobacco use and a rise in youth e-cigarette use. While Ireland aimed to reduce tobacco use to less than 5% by 2025, recent data shows it hovering at 17%. Worryingly, a 2022 survey revealed that two in every five girls and a quarter of boys aged 15-17 had used an e-cigarette.

Convening in Dublin provided an opportunity to double down and renew the push for what we know works: advertising bans, smoke-free laws and – the gold standard – higher tobacco taxes. 

Raising real prices

Following that major meeting, the World Health Organization (WHO) has now launched a big new initiative urging countries to raise real prices on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary drinks by at least 50% by 2035 through health taxes. The “3 by 35” Initiative is based on studies showing that a one-time 50% price increase in these products could prevent 50 million premature deaths over the next 50 years. 

This period between Dublin and the upcoming UN High Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases in September is a time to mobilize action behind these creative new solutions that can counter Big Tobacco well into the future.

The tobacco industry is playing the long game, and we need to, too. No public health win is permanent. If politicians and the public aren’t vigilant, Big Tobacco will continue trying to dismantle laws that protect health, while finding ways to bypass others. The next era of tobacco control requires innovative solutions – they will make all the difference. 

Dr Mary-Ann Etiebet is the President and CEO of Vital Strategies where she leads a team of over 400 people in over 80 countries working to advance long-term solutions for the growing burden of noncommunicable disease and injury.

Image Credits: Johannes Zielcke, Filter.

Delhi traffic officer Ashok Kumar explains the new rules on 1 July.

NEW DELHI – When drivers entered fuel stations on 1 July, they found bright new warning signs and traffic police positioned at the fuel pumps. Old vehicles would be identified by special, new cameras and denied fuel. Drivers  also risked having their vehicles seized for “liquidation.” 

The day marked the beginning of a widespread campaign by central government’s Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in the Delhi region to reduce air pollution.  

Any gasoline-powered vehicle older than 10 years, or a diesel vehicle older than 15 years, was supposed to face action – and at least 80 such vehicles were seized initially.

Although some  6.1 million over-age vehicles are registered, the actual number on the roads is far lower, and some estimate it to be around 400,000. 

However, enforcement quickly fizzled out after the Delhi state government sought a pause following protests on social media. Many of these went viral and were also reported widely in the media. 

Enforcement aided by advanced new cameras

To identify these vehicles at the pumps and on the road, CAQM installed hundreds of advanced cameras with automated number plate recognition (ANPR) linked to a database. 

The ban on such older vehicles circulating in Delhi was first introduced in 2015, but after two days of protests over the enforcement, the Delhi government pressured CAQM to put the operation on hold. 

Chief Minister of Delhi Rekha Gupta tweeted that the decision should be suspended as it was adversely affecting the daily lives and livelihoods of millions of families. She called for a practical, equitable, and phased solution.

Delhi’s environment minister, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, cited several “technological gaps” in the ANPR system in a letter to CAQM posted on X on Thursday. These include that it lacks robustness, there are crucial glitches in the camera placement, sensors aren’t working, and the system is not fully integrated with databases of states neighbouring Delhi. He called for a “holistic approach and implementation” in Delhi and its neighbouring regions. 

However, a source told Health Policy Watch that ANPR was able to identify up to 6,000 overage vehicles per day during tests, and described it as a “foolproof” method. Tests conducted since last December showed that the system has worked well. 

Ironically, a day before the enforcement drive began, Gupta of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Party said that the Delhi state government would follow orders of the courts and the CAQM.

Despite repeated inquiries from Health Policy Watch, CAQM did not provide any details on the future of the campaign in Delhi. However, it made it clear in a press release related to curbing pollution in neighbouring Haryana state, that it intends to continue to advocate for the liquidation of the ‘end-of-life’ (EoL) vehicles plan and ANPR cameras. 

The initial campaign in Delhi was supposed to be part of a regional initiative by Indian authorities that aimed to get an additional 4.5 million EoL vehicles off the road starting in two phases in November,  then April 2026. The rollout of ANPR cameras in other states and cities had also begun. 

However, as long as the Delhi State Government opposes enforcement, the agency will find it difficult to continue to clean up Delhi.  

Weak political appetite to tackle air pollution

The call for a pause signals the weak political appetite of the five-month-old Delhi government to take hard decisions to improve air quality in what has frequently been ranked as the world’s most polluted capital over the past decade. 

Even before Sirsa’s letter to CAQM last week, there was a perceptible shift in the party’s tone. In March, Sirsa promised an early crackdown on polluting vehicles that are a major contributor to Delhi’s annual air pollution, particularly in winter:

Older vehicles emit high levels of polluting nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and contribute to the microscopic pollutant, PM2.5. In 2024, PM2.5 levels reached peaks of 732 micrograms per m3 – about 73 times higher than the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 24-hour guideline level. 

But on 2 July after the protests, Sirsa blamed the previous Aam Admi Party (AAP) government for not enforcing the ban earlier:

The protests included many influential voices across the political spectrum. But most ignore health impacts and the fact that the older cars have outdated fuel standards, which means that they are inevitably more polluting, regardless of how well they may have been maintained. 

Health impact of vehicular pollution 

Drivers and passengers in heavy traffic with many polluting vehicles are typically exposed to excessively high levels of oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) from gasoline vehicles, as well as fine particulates, PM2.5 from diesel. 

Even short-term exposure to high levels of those pollutants prompts immediate, physiological responses, including headaches, irritation in the eyes, nose and throat, and difficulties in breathing. 

Chronic, long-term exposure to traffic pollution can have far more severe health effects, worsening asthma and other lung disorders, cardiovascular problems and high blood pressure, leading to premature death. 

Air pollution has also been identified in a new report as being a more significant cause of lung cancer in ‘never smokers’ than previously believed, according to a new study published in Nature. Patients from regions of the world with high levels of air pollution were more likely to have genomic mutations linked to cancer.

In Delhi alone, 7.8 years life years are estimated to be lost from air pollution while the average for India is 3.6 years. 

WHO’s South East Asia region, which extends east from Pakistan to Bangladesh, continues to have the highest overall burden of disease from air pollution, and India is one of the worst-affected countries. A little over two million Indians a year die from air pollution, with the worst effects concentrated in Delhi and other major cities. 

Air pollution is also linked to obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction and genomic damage, points out Dr Sanjeev Bagai, a prominent paediatrician in Delhi. 

“Vehicular pollution is the lesser-mentioned culprit causing serious human harm,” he said in an interview with Health Policy Watch.

Vehicles are a big chunk of Delhi’s air pollution

In the Delhi region, vehicles contribute significantly to the air pollution crisis. According to officials, vehicles emit 78% of the nitrogen oxide (NOx), 41% of sulphur dioxide (SO2), and at least 28% of PM 2.5 particulate matter pollution –  although some estimates put it at 40% and as much as 50% in winter. Much of the NOx also converts to PM 2.5, which is so fine that it can settle deep into the lungs and other organs, causing damage. 

Neither the science nor the policy to get older vehicles off the road are new.  A ban on EoL vehicles has been in force since 2015, when it was first ordered by the nation’s top environmental court, the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The ban was upheld in 2018 by the Supreme Court and in 2024, a powerful panel headed by the country’s top bureaucrat, then Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, called out the “very slow progress” on implementing the ban. 

Science vs #DelhiFuelBan protests

Many of those criticising the crackdown claim that 10 or 15-year-old vehicles can remain in good condition. For instance, one social media user praised his father’s 16-year-old Mercedes as a so-called “zero pollution” vehicle.

The facts, however, don’t bear that out. Vehicles with the latest fuel standard –  Bharat Stage 6 (BS 6), equivalent to Euro 6 – emit far less pollution than earlier standards, according to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). 

In its 2024 report, the ICCT said that so far, India’s “leap” from BS 4 to BS  was contributing to “significant reductions in tailpipe emissions.” Even 5- to 10-year-old vehicles with a BS 4 standard are approximately five or six times more polluting, while those that are 10 years or older, with BS 3 and BS 2 standards, can be 10 and 11 times more polluting, ICCT said.

But the claim that well maintained older vehicles are “clean” are being widely promoted, including by this influencer with over 15 million YouTube followers:

Protests across political spectrum

Criticism of the ban has come across most of the political spectrum. An opposition Member of Parliament, Saket Gokhale of the Trinamool Congress, called the ban “ridiculous” and a “major financial hit to the middle class”, affecting six million owners. He has written to the federal transport minister asking for the policy to be withdrawn:

A columnist appealed to Prime Minister Modi, who follows her on X, to allow old vehicles that comply with emission norms. She cites an automobile manufacturers group, which claims that a large number of these vehicles can meet stringent standards. 

Most air quality advocates are silent

On the other hand, the usually vocal air quality advocates were largely silent. The authorities also did not defend the ban once the protests began increasing. 

Approaches by Health Policy Watch to several organisations yielded no response. Amongst the few exceptions were Karthik Ganesan and Arpan Patra of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). 

In an article on Thursday in the Indian Express, they welcomed the measures as being a good, first step shortly before the campaign was suspended. 

“The restriction on the fuelling of end-of-life vehicles in Delhi firmly communicates the government’s intent to curtail pollution… This ban must cascade into the following logical next steps to truly clean up transportation emissions,” wrote Ganesan and Patra.

Until now, the government had largely relied on frequent, mandatory pollution checks on vehicles that pulled into service stations, but these use old technologies that only check for very high levels of smoke particles and carbon monoxide. They don’t capture data on fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and sulphates, which are the pollutants most harmful to human health. 

As for more sophisticated testing, there are only two vehicle fitness centres in the entire city of more than 22 million people capable of this.

Meanwhile, studies by the ICCT and others have demonstrated that filtering vehicles by their age rather than rudimentary and outdated emissions tests, is a more reliable means of getting polluting vehicles off the road. 

Cameras installed at Delhi service stations can identify older vehicles by their registration plates. But their use now hangs in the balance after the government suspended implementation of the ban on older vehicles.

Will the new Delhi government ever step up? 

Experts say that enforcing the ban is just one step in reducing Delhi’s air pollution at its source. Public transport is patchy and buses don’t reach many neighbourhoods. 

About 31% of urban neighbourhoods in Delhi fall outside a 500-meter radius of a public bus stop, a threshold recognised as the standard for walkable access under India’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) policy, according to a recent study.

If the government does eventually enforce the ban on old vehicles using its updated technology, it will also be expected to enforce other court orders and pollution curbs  like the ban on fire crackers and steps against waste burning. 

If it doesn’t, it will need to contend with the optics. As Ashwini Tewari, the chief of India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, pointed out recently, foreigners want to avoid the Delhi region, including the booming city of Gurgaon on its southern border, where major multinationals like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Deloitte have large offices. 

The quality of the Delhi government’s air pollution mitigation strategies thus has major economic implications at the national as well as local level. 

The record for this new BJP government, which came into power in February, remains very mixed. While it is continuing and extending policies such as more EV buses, it is also is facing criticism for a plan to install so-called ‘modern air purifiers’ in the park of an elite neighbourhood despite a failed earlier experiment with outdoor smog towers. 

The new plan is to install 150 such ‘air purifiers’ over 85 acres. But with Delhi is spread over 366,000 acres, any such initiative will be ineffective, as experience and studies have shown. 

Cutting pollution at source is always a better option, as air quality researchers point out. For now, a series of pollution maps of Paris, showing how a curb on vehicles improved air quality, has gone viral in India. 

Data maps show the effect of vehicle curbs on lower air pollution in Paris

 

Image Credits: Asian News International, Chetan Bhattacharji, University of Chicago, Airparif.