Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine by enhancing patient-centred care, diagnostics, personalized treatment, and knowledge digitization across four domains: end users, practitioners, practices, and interventions. AI applications include machine learning for syndrome classification, deep learning for tongue and facial diagnostics, clinical decision support systems for personalized prescriptions, and digitization initiatives like India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. However, critical challenges persist: regulatory complexities and legal accountability, ethical concerns regarding intellectual property and cultural sensitivity, data privacy and security risks, scarcity of standardized data, preservation of human-centred care relationships, and need for global collaboration. This paper proposes comprehensive policy strategies including adapted regulatory frameworks, protection of traditional knowledge through mechanisms like the Nagoya Protocol, robust data governance aligned with global standards, standardized data infrastructure, practitioner capacity building, and multistakeholder collaboration through organizations like WHO's Global Centre for Traditional Medicine. Responsible AI integration requires balancing technological innovation with respect for cultural heritage, ecological values, and ethical standards to advance equitable and sustainable global health outcomes.
Governance and participation in health
Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are being adopted across the globe, including the Global South, to address health needs and strengthen health systems. The rapid adoption of AI solutions provides tremendous potential to redress health inequities and strengthen health systems. It also entails substantial risks of deepening inequities, creating new forms of exclusion and weakening fragile health systems. Drawing on field-based case studies and interdisciplinary consultations, this paper presents an emergent research landscape that prioritizes health equity, gender equality, ethical safeguards, inclusive governance and Global South leadership.
This paper draws on 40 in-depth interviews with current and former medication for opioid use disorder clients and four focus groups with 35 current clients at an opioid treatment clinic in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Transcripts were thematically analyzed to explore how stigma influenced medication for opioid use disorder adherence and retention. Five themes emerged: stigma encountered while using public transportation; employment-related stigma; lack of family support due to misinformation; institutional stigma within the treatment setting; and stigma management strategies, including altering appearance and distancing from peers. Gendered expectations intensified stigma for women, while assumptions of untrustworthiness shaped client interactions across settings. These experiences posed significant barriers to consistent treatment engagement. To support medication for opioid use disorder retention, the authors propose integrating stigma reduction through expanded family engagement, more flexible clinic policies, client-informed approaches and public education.
The 80th session of the UN General Assembly (September 2025) convened amid rising geopolitical tensions, authoritarianism, climate crises, and the genocide in Palestine, highlighting urgent calls for UN power redistribution. This critical reflection examines the UN's historical evolution from its 1945 founding after the League of Nations' failure, through early peacekeeping successes like the 1956 Suez crisis, to current structural limitations exposed by its inadequate response to Palestinian genocide. Global South leaders condemned the concentration of binding and veto power in the five-member Security Council over the 193-member General Assembly's non-binding recommendations, arguing this structure perpetuates colonial-era power imbalances and prevents timely humanitarian intervention. Leaders called for urgent restructuring to transfer decision-making authority from the Security Council to the General Assembly, arguing that true multilateralism requires equality among nations in both theory and practice to fulfil the UN Charter's foundational commitments to human rights, dignity, and social progress.
This paper assessed nutrition literacy and its association with diet quality among 1206 adolescents and young adults aged 10–24 years in Mayuge district, Eastern Uganda. Using a structured questionnaire, the Global Diet Quality Score was adapted to estimate diet quality, and the Adolescent Nutrition Literacy Scale was used to assess nutrition literacy status. Among 1206 respondents, 85.9% were still in school, over 62% were from low socioeconomic status households, and only 14% used mobile phones. Low nutrition literacy was prevalent, with many unfamiliar with a balanced diet or ignoring dietary advice, although 62% were willing to promote healthy eating. Overall, 12.6% had poor diet quality marked by frequent refined grain consumption and low fruit/vegetable intake. Having low nutrition literacy was associated with a close to five-fold increase in poor diets, while mobile phone use was associated with better diet quality by 56%. The authors propose that targeted interventions to improve nutrition literacy can enhance diet quality among adolescents and young adults. .
Climate change is a major threat to sustainable growth and development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The efforts of SSA to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 may be seen as a mirage if the adverse effects of climate change are not addressed. This review discusses the motivations for and importance of engaging communities in climate change and health research, the extent to which communities have been engaged in this in SSA and the barriers and facilitators faced. The findings highlight the demand to engage communities using strategies and processes that are sensitive to the community context in which it occurs, using participatory rural appraisal and community-based participatory approaches for interventions to address the effects and impacts created by climate change that are effective and responsive to community needs and interests. The authors argue that involvement and support by communities is design is essential for this.
This qualitative case study identified the political enablers of the successful adoption of an important law to support breastfeeding in Kenya. The strict Breast Milk Substitute (BMS) Act adopted in 2012 has since facilitated and protected remarkable improvements in breastfeeding rates. BMS legislation was first politically debated in Kenya in the 1980s following mobilization of women-led civil society organizations, namely the Breastfeeding Information Group and the Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization. The issue re-emerged on the political agenda in the 2000s but faced opposition from the transnational formula milk industry. Kenya’s BMS Act was ultimately adopted during a policy window opened by a constitutional reform. The Kenyan case illustrates how women’s political leadership can counteract the power of the transnational formula milk industry and help achieve strict BMS legislation. Effective female leadership for BMS legislation can occur in various political offices and positions, including those of ministers, legislators and bureaucrats. Female leaders can leverage their own influence by strategically exploiting policy windows and recruiting male allies.
This article is a part of Open Global Right's Litigating the Climate Emergency series on how human rights and strategic litigation might best be leveraged in the climate action movements. Communities in Africa are increasingly using litigation to challenge large extractive projects that exacerbate the climate emergency and loss of biodiversity. Climate-related litigation is a growing focus within the Africa context. Several communities and legal environmental organisations have gone to court to stop harmful projects or to assert the rights of communities where there have been violations of justice. While these communities are living in very uncertain times, the cases brought before the courts show that they are not passive bystanders, using strategic climate litigation as one avenue to challenge corporations and governments. While it is time- and money-consuming, the author argues that each victory creates a ripple effect in communities in Africa and in the boardrooms of multi-national companies.
An increasing body of evidence indicates that young individuals need accurate and easily accessible gender and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information to equip them to make well-informed choices about their SRH. The authors developed an engaging and educative seven-session radio show, which featured skits and guest speakers. A local radio station in Kenya broadcasted the show as a weekly episode over seven consecutive weeks. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with a purposeful sample of 17 parents and 20 adolescents aged 12—14 years living in an informal settlement in Nairobi and who had participated in at least three of the sessions; the radio manager and program presenter. Both parents and adolescents indicated that they felt more connected to each other after listening to the program and this enhanced communication, especially on SRH issues. Both adolescents and parents expressed greater awareness of gender and adolescent SRH issues, which were rarely discussed in detail in open forums in their context prior to the radio program. They recommended that such radio programs run regularly as they provide a platform where sensitive issues about adolescent health can be shared and discussed openly, allowing for both adolescent and community participation. Radio programming was perceived as a good platform for knowledge transfer and discussions about gender norms and SRH among young adolescents, if messages are designed to resonate with a diverse audience.
The 156th Session of the WHO Executive Board, held in Geneva, witnessed intense deliberations over the financial repercussions of the United States' withdrawal from the organization. Member States engaged in complex negotiations that revealed deep divisions about how to respond to the significant budget shortfall, with proposals ranging from reducing the base budget from USD 5.3 billion to USD 4.9 billion to potentially increasing assessed contributions by 20%. High income countries largely advocated for postponing new resolutions and prioritizing activities, while low income countries strongly resisted such approaches, arguing for the preservation of the organization's comprehensive mandate. The discussions highlighted the underlying vulnerabilities of the WHO's funding model, which heavily relies on voluntary earmarked contributions, and underscored the challenges of maintaining critical global health functions amid financial uncertainty. Diplomatic exchanges were marked by nuanced debates about prioritization, with countries like Russia, China, and India questioning the sudden financial adjustments and calling for more measured, transparent approaches to budgeting and resource allocation. The session ultimately reflected the complex task of balancing organizational sustainability with the diverse health priorities of Member States in an evolving global health landscape.