Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap. “It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine — low-income, Black households — that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it…
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The Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against vaccinations, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrawing U.S. funding for the world’s preeminent international vaccine organization. The group — known as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — is the world’s largest funder of life-saving vaccinations and says it has helped vaccinate more than 1.1…
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Greenville, Miss. — Cedric Sturdevant woke up with “a bit of depression” but made it to church, as he does every Sunday. In a few days, he would drive from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to join HIV advocates at an April rally against the Trump administration’s actions. It had clawed back more than $11 billion in federal public health grants to states and abruptly terminated millions of…
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When it comes to vaccines, there are two kinds of parents coming into Dr. Megan Prior’s office in Washington, D.C., these days. One set are parents who pepper the pediatrician with increasingly panicked questions about the future availability of vaccines and whether their children can get any shots early. Then there are the parents who feel vindicated in their decision not to vaccinate their…
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On a sweltering morning in western India in 2022, three U.S. inspectors showed up unannounced at a massive pharmaceutical plant surrounded by barricades and barbed wire and demanded to be let inside. For two weeks, they scrutinized humming production lines and laboratories spread across the dense industrial campus, peering over the shoulders of workers at the tablet presses…
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A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others. One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the safety of covid vaccines for children and pregnant women.
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Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health on Monday openly protested the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency and consequences for human lives, writing in a sharply worded letter that its actions are causing “a dramatic reduction in life-saving research.” In a June 9 letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, NIH workers said they felt “compelled to speak up when our…
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In July 2024, the Biden administration proposed a rule to address heat-related illness that it claimed would protect 36 million workers. The directive would have required companies to monitor workers for heat stress, provide them with cool-down breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas, and ensure that they were given ample water. “The purpose of this rule is simple…
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Disabled people hold immense expertise in navigating both chronic illnesses and moments of crisis. And yet, despite all the public reflections on “lessons learned” at the five-year anniversary of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — from which hundreds of people in the U.S. are still dying each week — disabled people find themselves under increasing attack by the Trump administration.
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By Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor
Fiji’s Minister for Health and Medical Services has revealed the latest HIV numbers in the country to a development partner roundtable discussing the national response.
The minister reported 490 new HIV cases between October and December last year, bringing the 2024 total to 1583.
“Included in this number are 32 newborns diagnosed with HIV acquired through mother-to-child transmission,” Dr Atonio Rabici Lalabalavu said.
Fiji declared an outbreak of the disease in January. The Fiji Sun reported around 115 HIV-related deaths in the January-September 2024 period.
Fiji’s Central Division reported 1100 new cases in 2024, with 427 in the Western Division and 50 in the Northern Division.
Of the newly recorded cases, less than half — 770 — have been successfully linked to care, of which 711 have been commenced on antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Just over half were aged in their twenties, and 70 percent of cases were male.
Increase in TB, HIV co-infection
Dr Lalabalavu said the increase in HIV cases was also seeing an increase in tuberculosis and HIV co-infection, with 160 individuals in a year.
He said the ministry strongly encouraged individuals to get tested, know their status, and if it was positive, seek treatment.
And if it is negative, to maintain that negative status.
“I will reiterate what I have said before to all Fijians – HIV should not be a death sentence in Fiji,” he said.
In the Western Pacific, the estimated number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) reached 1.9 million in 2020, up from 1.4 million in 2010.
At the time, the World Health Organisation said that over the previous two decades, HIV prevalence in the Western Pacific had remained low at 0.1 percent.
However, the low prevalence in the general population masked high levels of HIV infection among key populations.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The Trump White House on Tuesday formally asked Congress to rescind over $9 billion in approved spending, taking aim at lifesaving foreign aid programs as well as funding for U.S. public broadcasting outlets targeted by the president. The $9.4 billion rescission request, expected to be the first of several, is laid out in a memo authored by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell…
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Over the last four decades, the United States has built a web of federal policies and funding to address domestic and intimate partner violence, a pervasive health and safety crisis. In just 130 days, the Trump administration has put that safety net in jeopardy. Funding pauses, cuts, firings and information purges have destabilized the infrastructure that helps victims of abuse.
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The White House’s keystone health report outlining its agenda for Americans’ health is riddled with artificial intelligence “hallucinations,” with fabricated citations and broken links reflective of the administration’s embrace of non-scientific approaches to public health. An analysis by The Washington Post uncovered numerous citations in the “Make America Healthy Again” report with the…
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As Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) acolytes readily admit, U.S. public health continues to deteriorate. Five years into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. life expectancy is at best stalled while those of other industrial countries have rebounded back onto their historical trends upward. The solution Trump administration…
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A new study confirms what locals and environmental activists across the Gulf South and beyond have said for years: Black, Brown and Indigenous workers do not benefit equitably from jobs offered by the petrochemical industry despite their communities often bearing the brunt of its pollution. In Louisiana, for example, residents and activists say jobs promised to Black communities located near…
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Last week, environmental groups decried plans from the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind and “reconsider” drinking water limits for four per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, compounds linked to cancer and damage to the immune and endocrine systems, among other health effects. The limits had been finalized by Joe Biden’s administration last April as part of an effort to…
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ANALYSIS: By Ian Powell
In February 2025, Dr Diana Sarfati resigned, not unexpectedly, as Director-General of Health after only two years into her five-year term.
As a medical specialist, and in her role as developing the successful cancer control agency, she had extensive experience in New Zealand’s health system.
However, she did not conform to the privately expressed view of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon: That the problem with the health system is that it is led by health.
Responsibility for the appointment of public service chief executives rests with the Public Service Commissioner.
In carrying out this function, Brian Roche had two choices for the process of selecting Sarfati’s replacement — run a contestable hiring process (the usual method) or appoint someone without this process.
With the required approval of Attorney-General Judith Collins and Health Minister Simeon Brown, Roche opted for the exception rather than the rule.
This suggests a degree of pre-determination to appoint someone without the “hindrance” of health system experience, consistent with Luxon’s view.
An appointment from outside health
Consequently, on April 1, Audrey Sonerson was appointed the new Director-General of Health for a five-year term.
She had been the Ministry of Transport chief executive (including when Brown was transport minister). She also had senior positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and in the Police and Treasury.
Though she had been part of the Treasury’s health team and has a master’s in health economics, her only health system experience was in the brief hiatus between Sarfati’s resignation when acting director-general and becoming the confirmed replacement.
‘For a minister with no experience of the complexity of health care delivery to choose a director-general who herself has no health experience is extremely concerning.’
— Dr David Galler, former intensive care specialist
This is unprecedented for the director-general position. Sonerson is the 18th person to hold this position. The first 10 had been medical doctors. In 1992, the first non-doctor holder was appointed (a Canadian with some health management experience).
The subsequent six appointees all had extensive health system experience. Three were medical doctors (two in population health), two had been district health board chief executives, and one had been the director-general in Scotland and a medical geographer.
Dr David Galler is well-placed to comment on the significance of this extraordinary change of direction. He is a retired intensive care specialist and former President of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
He held the unique position of principal medical adviser to the health minister, the ‘eyes and ears’ of the health system for three health ministers in the mid to late 2000s. He also worked closely with two director-generals.
Drawing on this experience, Galler observes that: “Director-generals of health must be respected, influential, knowledgeable, connected and trusted, to ensure that good policy goes into practice and good practice informs policy . . . For a minister with no experience of the complexity of health care delivery to choose a director-general who herself has no health experience is extremely concerning.”
Breadth of the health system
As the director-general heads up the Health Ministry, she is responsible for being the “steward” of our health system. In this context she is the lead adviser to the government on health. In the context of seeking to improve and protect the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders, the organisation Sonerson now leads is responsible for:
These responsibilities have to be considered in the context of how extensive the health system is beginning with its complexity, highly specialised range of health professional occupational groups, and its breadth.
This breadth ranges from community healthcare (predominantly general practices), local 24/7 acute hospitals, tertiary hospitals (lower volume, high complexity) and quaternary care services (national services for very uncommon or highly complex even lower volume procedures and treatments, including experimental medicine, uncommon surgical procedures, and advanced trauma care).
Another way of looking at this breadth is that it ranges in treatment from medical to surgical to mental health to diagnostic. And then there is population health such as epidemiology.
Population health and the Health Act
However, responsibility extends further to specific obligations under the Health Act 1956, many of which are operational. Although it is nearly 60 years old, this act has been updated by legislative amendments many times and as recently as 2022 with the passing of the Pae Ora Act that disestablished district health boards and established Health New Zealand.
The Health Act gives Sonerson’s health ministry the function of improving, promoting and protecting public health (as distinct from personal diagnostic and treatment health). Public health is legislatively defined as meaning either the health of all New Zealanders or a population group, community, or section of people within New Zealand.
A critical part of this role is the responsibility for ensuring that local government authorities improve, promote, and protect public health within their districts in appointing key positions (such as medical officers of health, environmental health officers and health protection officers); food and water safety; regular inspections for any nuisances, or any conditions likely to be injurious to health or offensive and, where necessary, secure their abatement or removal; make bylaws for the protection of public health; and provide reports on diseases and sanitary conditions within each district.
The population function under the Health Act of improving, promoting, and protecting public health means that how well the health ministry under Sonerson’s leadership performs directly affects the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders.
This is an immense responsibility that cannot be minimised.
Understanding universal health systems
Universal health systems such as ours are characterised by being highly complex, adaptive and labour intensive and innovative (innovation primarily comes from its workforce). They provide a public good (rather than commodities) and their breadth is considerable.
But, despite appearances to the contrary, the different parts of this breadth don’t function separately from each other. They are not just interconnected; they are interdependent.
As a result, each part makes up a highly integrated system. Consequently, relationships are critical. The more relational the culture, the better the system will perform; the more contractual the culture, the poorer it will perform.
Galler’s experience-based above-mentioned observation needs to be seen in the context of the challenging nature of universal health systems.
In a wider discussion on health system leadership, Auckland surgeon Dr Erica Whineray Kelly got to the core of the issue very well: “You’d never have a conductor of an orchestra who’d never played an instrument.”
Audrey Sonerson comes into the director-general position with a deficit. It will help her performance if she first recognises that there are many unknowns for her and then proceeds to listen to those within the system who possess the experience of knowing well these unknowns.
It might go some way to alleviating the legitimate concerns of Galler and Whineray Kelly and many others.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes. This article was first published by Newsroom and is republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on May 14 that the number of drug overdose deaths in the United States dropped by nearly 27 percent in 2024. The number represents a significant decrease after more than a decade of steeply climbing drug-related fatality rates that billions of dollars in federal spending on policing and border enforcement failed to contain.
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During testimony before a House committee on Wednesday, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told lawmakers that the public should not rely on him to dispense health advice. The mission of HHS, according to its website, is to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound…
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President Donald Trump is conducting an “unprecedented and illegal” broadside against science and scientists that will have devastating consequences for regular Americans, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont. The report, which casts Trump’s actions as a “war on science” that will lead to “preventable suffering” and “needless loss of…
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Moves by the Trump administration to draw up a new regulatory framework for types of toxic chemicals has sparked suspicion among health advocates who fear the changes will protect polluters but not public health. The concerns come after U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday rolled out preliminary plans to tackle widespread environmental contamination by…
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By Ruth Hill, RNZ News reporter
Striking senior New Zealand doctors have hit back at the Health Minister’s attack on their union for “forcing” patients to wait longer for surgery and appointments, due to their 24-hour industrial action.
Respiratory and sleep physician Dr Andrew Davies, who was on the picketline outside Wellington Regional Hospital, said for him and his colleagues, it was “not about the money” — it was about the inability to recruit.
“We’ve got vacant jobs that we’re not allowed to advertise,” he said. “It’s lies that they’re not getting rid of frontline staff.
“The job is technically there on paper, but if you’re not going to advertise for the job, you’re not going to fill it.
“In our department, we’ve waited months and months and months to fill some jobs, and you don’t just get a doctor next week. It takes six months for them to come.”
Dr Davies said no-one wanted to strike and have their patients miss out on care, but thousands of patients were already missing out on care every day, due to staff shortages.
“Every week, we’ve got empty clinics,” he said. “There is space in the clinics that’s not being used, because there’s not a doctor in the chair there.
“While, today, that’s 20 percent of the work of the week gone, because we’re on strike, in some departments, it’s 20 percent every week.
“Every day of the week, there’s a 20 percent deficit in the number of patients people are seeing.”
5500 doctors on strike
Nationwide, about 5500 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists are on strike until 11:59pm today, causing the cancellation of about 4300 planned procedures and specialist appointments.
In a social media post, Health Minister Simeon Brown blamed the union for the disruption, saying an updated offer last week — including a $25,000 bonus for those moving to “hard-to-staff regions” — was rejected by the union, before members even saw it.
Union executive director Sarah Dalton said she would be very happy to facilitate a meeting between doctors and the minister — or he could accept the invitation to attend its national conference.
“They would love to feel like someone up there was listening,” she said. “They don’t at the moment.
“We need to move away from rhetoric, and actually have some time and space for meaningful discussion.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re on strike today. After eight months of negotiating, there was nothing on the table from the employer.
“It was only after we called for strike action that anything changed, so let’s do better.”
Critical workforce shortages were undermining patient care and the current pay offer, which amounted to an increase of less than one percent a year for most doctors, would do nothing to fix that, Dalton said.
“How do you tackle vacancies? You put more time and effort in good terms and conditions for your permanent workforce, and you stop spending spending $380 million a year on locums and temps.
“We shouldn’t have that heavy reliance on those people, so we’ve got to change it.”
NZ training doctors for Australia
After many years of study subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer, Maeve Hume-Nixon recently qualified as a public health specialist, but may yet end up going overseas.
“I actually thought last year that I would have to go to Australia, where I would be paid another $100,000 minimum, because there were no jobs for me here, basically.
“In the end, I managed to get an emergency extension to my contract and this has continued, but I don’t have security and it’s a pretty frustrating position to be in.”
Neurologist Dr Maas Mollenhauer said he was not able to access the tests he needed to provide care for his patients.
“I’ve seen patients that I have sent for urgent imaging, but they didn’t receive it, and then I got an email from one of my colleagues who was on call, telling me that patient had rocked up to the Emergency Department and, basically, the front half of their skull was full of brain tumour.”
Cancer patients waiting too long
Medical oncologist Dr Sharon Pattison said the health system had reached the point where it was so starved of people and resources, it had become “inefficient”.
“Everyone is waiting for everything, so everything takes longer, and we are waiting until people get seriously ill, before we do anything about it.”
The government’s “faster cancer treatment time” target — 90 percent of patients receiving cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat — would not give the true picture of what was happening for patients, she said.
“For instance, if I have someone with a potential diagnosis of cancer, there are so many points at which they are waiting — waiting for scan, waiting for a biopsy, waiting for a radiologist to report the scan to show us where to get the biopsy.
“That radiologist may be overseas, so if I want to talk to that specialist I can’t do that. Then the wait for a pathologist to report on the biopsy can now take up to 6-8 weeks.
“We know that, for some people with cancer, if you wait for that long before we can even make your treatment plan, we’re going to make your outcomes worse.
“The whole system is at the point where we are making people more unwell, because we can’t do what we should be doing for them in the framework that we need to.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Asia Pacific Report
Thousands of senior hospital doctors and specialists walked off the job today for an unprecedented 24-hour strike in protest over stalled contract negotiations and thousands of other health workers protested across Aotearoa New Zealand against the coalition government’s cutbacks to the public health service Te Whatu Ora.
In spite of the disruptive bad weather across the country, protesters were out in force expressing their concerns over a national health service in crisis.
Among speakers criticising the government’s management of public health at a rally at the entrance to The Domain, near Auckland Hospital, many warned that the cutbacks were a prelude to “creeping privatisation”.
“Health cuts hurt services, the patients who rely on them, and the workers who deliver them,” said health worker Jason Brooke.
“Under this coalition government we’ve seen departments restructured, roles disestablished, change proposals enacted, and hiring freezes implemented.
“Make no mistake. This is austerity. This is managed decline.
“The coalition can talk all they like about spending more on healthcare, the reality for ‘those-of-us-on-the-ground’ is that we know that money is not being spent where it’s needed.”
Placards said “Fight back together for the workers”, “Proud to be union”, “We’re fighting back for workers rights”, and one poster declared: “Don’t bite the hand that wipes your bum — safe staffing now”.
Palestine supporters also carried a May Day message of solidarity from Palestinian Confederation of Trade Unions.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Over the last couple of weeks, even as tariffs have wreaked havoc on markets around the world, President Donald Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly teased the notion of slapping hefty tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Lutnick has said these are likely to be introduced before the summer. Trump’s rationale for placing tariffs on medical drugs is, like most of his…
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The Biden administration supervised the largest repeal in social benefits in U.S. history upon declaring the COVID-19 pandemic over. The Trump administration appears to be surpassing that feat, rapidly winding down the project called the United States. The fallout includes the health of the American people. In recent weeks, we’ve seen billions slashed from state health programs…
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Despite the self-imposed chaos disrupting the federal government, public health watchdogs say the Trump administration’s strategy for axing pollution protections on behalf of its allies in wealthy industries is more sophisticated than what was seen during the president’s first term. Advocates for communities overburdened by industrial pollution and the impacts of climate change say years of…
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Millions of people across the United States could be drinking water contaminated with dangerous levels of substances created when utilities disinfect water tainted with animal manure and other pollutants, according to a report released Thursday. An analysis of testing results from community water systems in 49 states found that nearly 6,000 such systems serving 122 million people recorded an…
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Tsu-Yin Wu was shocked when the email from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) showed up in her inbox. On March 21, just 18 months into her five-year study, the NIH had unilaterally decided that Wu’s research “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” The project’s funding, like hundreds of other NIH grants across the country, was terminated immediately. Wu, a nursing professor and…
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In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana have died of pertussis, the disease commonly known as whooping cough. Washington state recently announced its first confirmed death from pertussis in more than a decade. Idaho and South Dakota each reported a death this year, and Oregon last year reported two as well as its highest number of cases since 1950. While much of the country…
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Cities and states fighting a historic measles outbreak find themselves undermined by the Trump administration as they struggle to provide crucial vaccinations and overcome disinformation. As of this week, cases were nearing 650 in 22 states, on track to reach a 34-year high. A second unvaccinated child died of measles in West Texas last week. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
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