In the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, health systems across the region are under severe strain as injuries, displacement, and attacks on healthcare mount. By early March alone, Iran reported over 1,300 deaths and 9,000 injuries, Lebanon at least 570 deaths and 1,400 injuries, and WHO verified 43 attacks on healthcare facilities across both countries since 28 February. Over 100,000 people were reported as displaced in Iran and up to 700,000 in Lebanon, with crowded shelter conditions raising risks of respiratory and diarrhoeal diseases. In Gaza, WHO report that medical evacuations remained suspended and hospitals have continued to operate under critical shortages, while temporary airspace restrictions have disrupted WHO supply shipments affecting over 1.5 million people across 25 countries. Humanitarian health emergency appeals across the Eastern Mediterranean Region — where 115 million people require assistance — remain 70% underfunded. WHO calls on all parties to protect civilians and healthcare, ensure unimpeded humanitarian access, and pursue de-escalation.
Values, Policies and Rights
On Workers' Day 2026, the Southern African Trade Union Coordination Council (SATUCC) emphasises building cohesion within the labour movement to address challenges posed by digitalisation, remote work, and casualisation. Key demands include the right to unionise, strike, and broader socio-economic rights such as housing and citizenship. In 2026, the Secretariat reported a renewed commitment to strengthening labour rights, promoting decent work, deepening regional cooperation, and responding proactively to the evolving world of work. The Decent Work in Construction project supports labour law compliance and working conditions in South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, and had reached over 1,000 workers by early 2026. SATUCC is monitoring violations of labour rights — especially freedom of association — and promotes the formalisation of informal work arrangements, including collective bargaining frameworks in the construction sector. In the extractive sector, SATUCC advocates for community rights, protection against land displacement, and advocates for corporate accountability. The 2026 programme combines policy engagement, grassroots implementation, and strong advocacy on both traditional labour concerns and emerging challenges, positioning SATUCC as a critical voice for workers across Southern Africa.
The author argues that climate–health research is not value-neutral and that the values shaping research priorities, methods, and policy recommendations must be made explicit. Climate-related health harms are unequally distributed and often irreversible, creating strong ethical reasons for deliberate priority-setting, even under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Key value-laden trade-offs are illustrated through energy policy decisions, where governments must weigh economic stability and livelihoods against the health harms of carbon-intensive systems — choices that evidence alone cannot resolve. Drawing on analyses of UN system frameworks, the author identifies sustainability, equity, justice, and solidarity as recurrent values across climate, health, and humanitarian policy domains. Additional research ethics values — beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, respect, and scientific integrity — are consistently at stake, particularly in studies involving vulnerable populations with limited adaptive capacity. Constrained funding environments and contested acceptance of climate science can shape which questions are pursued and which populations remain visible in research agendas. Making values explicit does not replace evidence or legal frameworks, but provides a shared language for navigating difficult choices in a field with high stakes for health, equity, and future generations.
Zimbabwe's National One Health Strategic Plan seeks to align with the Global Quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 15 (Life on Land). The plan aligns with Zimbabwe's National Development Strategy 1, NDS 2 priority areas, and Vision 2030, which emphasise sustainable development, food security, climate resilience, and inclusive growth. Strengthening governance, aligning policies, and fostering collaboration among key One Health ministries and departments — including the Ministry of Health and Child Care; the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development; the Ministry of Environment, Climate, and Wildlife; and the National Biotechnology Authority — as well as other relevant stakeholders, is identified as central to building and implementing a comprehensive One Health framework.
The 2nd Uganda National Conference on Health, Human Rights and Development (UCHD 2025) brought together policymakers, leaders, civil society actors, development partners, academia and grassroots advocates. Over the three days, delegates engaged in conversations that strengthened movements, forged partnerships and laid a foundation for lasting change and sustainable multi-sectoral collaborations that will accelerate the country’s progress to universal health coverage. The conference launched The Uganda Declaration on Social Determinants of Health - a shared commitment to advancing health equity in Uganda. The authors note " the seeds of change are planted; now the work is carried forward into action."
The Gaza Strip, characterized by its dense population and persistent geopolitical instability, has experienced decades of armed conflict, resulting in systematic healthcare infrastructure deterioration. The healthcare delivery system has been collapsed by Israeli military operations, creating cascading effects that extend beyond regional boundaries. The medical facilities have been targeted, combined with humanitarian aid restrictions, has created unprecedented challenges in providing essential healthcare services to the affected population. The environmental degradation resulting from infrastructure destruction poses additional threats to regional and global health systems. This analysis examines the multifaceted health crisis encompassing healthcare system dysfunction, pharmaceutical supply chain disruption, infectious disease proliferation, and the consequent implications for global health security. The conflict and military support raise trade-offs between military expenditures and other critical sectors, including international healthcare and development funding. The failure to protect healthcare infrastructure in Gaza establishes concerning precedents for similar conflicts globally and undermines the fundamental principle of medical neutrality. The Gaza crisis demonstrates the urgent need for strengthened global health security mechanisms capable of responding to conflict-induced health emergencies.
This paper examined changes in the portrayal of health system strengthening (HSS) in Zimbabwe from the mid-2000s to the period post-2020 using a framing analysis methodology. Four main frames were identified, namely HSS as an external funder imperative, a pathway to resolve crisis, a strategy for achieving long-term stability and a foundational investment for a resilient health system. HSS as a remedy for a crisis frame has been the most influential, but the greater involvement of external funders and reductions in their funding has shifted towards more governmental responsibility, resulting in health system shocks in critical areas such as personnel. The vulnerability and emotional frames that attracted external funding during peak crisis are found to have lost potency over time, and the shifts require policy response, to avoid missed opportunities for improvement and a loss of public trust in government effectiveness and responsiveness. Nascent, overly futuristic framings such as resilience are noted to be interpreted with caution, as they may cloud the reality that HSS is simply sufficient investment in basic functions. The authors argue that HSS needs to be reframed as a routine, country-owned strategy aimed at improving health system performance rather than a crisis response shaped by external funder interventions.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement, adopted 20 May 2025 as WHO's second legally binding health treaty, mandates a One Health approach for preventing zoonotic spillovers (75% of emerging infectious diseases) and establishes a Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system requiring manufacturers to provide WHO with 20% of pandemic product production in exchange for pathogen genetic sequence data access. Learning from COVID-19's inequitable distribution (low-income countries: <33% vaccination coverage vs. high-income: ~80%) and the 2022 TRIPS patent waiver's failure due to lack of technology transfer, Article 11 shifts focus from patents to building tangible manufacturing capabilities through WHO-led technology transfer hubs. Critical implementation challenges include procedural dependency on a May 2026 annex negotiation that must occur before the Agreement can be signed (Article 31) and ratified by 60 parties (Article 33), plus geopolitical fractures from US nonparticipation and abstentions by 11 countries including Italy, Israel, and Russia, which fragment global pharmaceutical supply chains and undermine the benefit-sharing system. The Agreement's success in reshaping pandemic response depends on successfully negotiating operational modalities and bridging the gap between equity goals and fragmented geopolitical realities involving major pharmaceutical manufacturing nations.
Together with the communities of Kiteezi, in Wakiso District, CEHURD filed a landmark case in the Civil Division of the High Court of Uganda against the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) and the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) challenging the rights violations that followed the August 2024 catastrophic collapse of the Kiteezi landfill. This tragedy resulted in fatalities, displacement, and extensive environmental contamination. The legal intervention seeks to compel KCCA and NEMA to decommission the landfill, comprehensively restore the surrounding environment, and adopt sustainable waste management systems for the betterment of the communities in Kiteezi. Through this action, CEHURD further aims to address the failure of KCCA and NEMA to fulfil their constitutional and statutory mandates to safeguard the right to a clean, safe, and healthy environment, an omission that escalated risks, including hazardous waste leakage and water source contamination to the communities. CEHURD aims to set a precedent for environmental accountability and the protection of health-related human rights.
This paper explored the social norms shaping perceptions, attitudes, and decision-making around family planning among men in three provinces of Kasai Central, Lualaba, and Sankuruthe of the Democratic Republic of the Congo through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The authors found that while social norms oppose the use of modern contraceptive methods and advocate for larger family size, there is notable social support for birth spacing. Some men reported they would support their wives in learning about contraceptive methods if they were able to make the final decision. However, other men felt that allowing their wives to seek a method would undermine their authority, or their virility. To increase modern contraceptive uptake, the authors recommend that interventions address the underlying issues that contribute to non-adherence, addressing the three categories and their associated norms individually and engaging reference groups important to each, including healthcare providers, religious leaders, and male peer groups, in family planning programming.