BMJ Global Health

Malaria continues to exert financial strain on households and economies in endemic settings. As in many other Southeast Asian settings, Indonesia offers free or heavily subsidised care for patients with malaria; however, patients often face many financial barriers to seek care.

Access to abortion care is central to women’s health and wellbeing, and the GGR has interrupted a range of family planning programmes with follow-on impacts on service provision, fertility rates and access to health inputs. US family planning aid drops under Republican Presidents when the Global Gag Rule (GGR) is in force. Once Democratic Presidents are elected, it increases by 48%.

Community engagement and an intersectional gender approach in infectious disease research and programmes promote inclusive and equitable access to healthcare and redress unequal power relations. Locally owned and context-responsive approaches improve the relevance, uptake and effectiveness of both research and interventions in settings of poverty.

To be successful, a disease elimination programme requires the following. Assessing the available interventions and setting realistic expectations for what they can and cannot achieve thus requiring investments in to new tools to be developed. Ensuring the sustainability, scalability and affordability of the interventions. Guaranteeing unwavering political commitment and proportionate, coordinated, sustained funding and cross-border collaboration.

Local ownership and contextualisation should be prioritised in research capacity strengthening. Access to research training beyond academia needs to be expanded. Research capacity building should be embedded in governance structures and supported with sustainable resources. Introduction ‘Equitable research capacity’ is the fair distribution of resources, opportunities and power among individual researchers and institutions so that they can fully participate in, and benefit from, research.

Introduction The WHO Pandemic Agreement was adopted by the 78th World Health Assembly on 20 May 2025. Under Article 33, the Pandemic Agreement will enter into force 30 days after the sixtieth nation’s ratification.1 The critical question now is whether the Pandemic Agreement can ensure that, when the next pandemic strikes, vaccines and other essential health technologies reach everyone, everywhere, without devastating delays.

Evidence on adolescent SRH initiatives Globally, various interventions have been tested to improve SRH knowledge and access for young boys and girls, such as Comprehensive Sexuality Education, shown significant improvement among adolescents’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours related to SRH in India.

Discussion Both vaginal birth and the safety of the baby were important to participants in this study. Women and clinicians both justified CS to promote fetal safety even though most women did not want a CS. However, many clinicians felt they could not ‘take a risk’ and often opted for a CS in this high-risk population. Most women clearly understood their indication for CS, despite the doctors’ misconception that the women could not understand.

Summary box Children could not be included in mpox vaccination roll-out within the first 100 days of the latest Mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and are yet to be rolled out in many countries with rising cases, despite this age group accounting for a large proportion of suspected cases and deaths. Mpox has highlighted major ongoing structural barriers for inclusion of children in outbreak and pandemic response efforts.

Discussion E-cigarette use has emerged as a prominent alternative to traditional smoking, particularly among the youth population, and currently, it has raised significant public health concerns.65 Therefore, it is essential to investigate prevalence and assess determinants of e-cigarette use to strategise global health policies and regulations for a high life expectancy.