Health

With some 800 players surveyed, report is most extensive review of women’s football conditions in a decade Average club wage has tripled since 2017 but there is a wide gulf in pay and support from country to country

When Adina Isenberg was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago, it came as a shock. “You think, like, how is this real? This must be some sort of joke.”But when she woke up from her lumpectomy procedure, she was faced with a whole new host of feelings with how the surgery changed her body. “When I woke up from my surgery, I couldn’t believe that in addition to the scar that I had prepared for on my breast, I had a second scar in my armpit, which is for when they take out what they call the sentinel node,” she said. Researchers at the University Health Network in Toronto are now leveraging AI to help create a 3D picture of what tumours look like. Using this technology could better prepare patients for the procedures they are about to undergo. Story continues below advertisement

In recent decades, many countries have made meaningful progress in developing community-based mental health services. Moreover, rights-based approaches have gained traction as people with lived experience increasingly have a voice in shaping mental health policy and services. These developments have shown that people living with mental health conditions can flourish in their communities when given the right support. Yet, around the world, very large numbers of people with mental health conditions live behind closed doors in psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions. Some have been there for months; others for decades. According to the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Atlas, about half were brought in against their will, stripped of basic daily choices like what to wear or when to eat, and cut off from the outside world. We think of institutional mental health care as an outdated model. But it is far more than that. It is a human rights issue hiding in plain sight. Many countries still rely heavily on standalone psychiatric institutions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched a new five-year strategy for its Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, charting a path towards a world where every country can detect and understand emerging health threats within 24 hours of their appearance by 2030. Strengthening rapid detection is a cornerstone of global health security, helping countries contain outbreaks before they escalate into larger epidemics or spread internationally. The Hub’s strategy aims to equip every country with the capabilities needed to rapidly identify and understand emerging health threats, thus supporting them in developing the systems, capacities and partnerships necessary to prevent outbreaks from escalating into epidemics or pandemics. Speaking at the opening of the World Health Summit in Berlin, in the presence of Germany’s Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health, Georg Kippels, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reflected on the Hub’s achievements in the five years since its creation. "Five years after its establishment, the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence has become an integral part of the global health security system," he said.

MainThe uncontrolled cellular growth and local tissue disruption produced by tumorigenesis elicit a complex host response, including chronic inflammation, metabolic reprogramming and endocrine dysfunction1,2. These systemic changes can emerge early and persist throughout the disease course, contributing to profound alterations in appetite, energy balance, tissue composition and immune function3,4. Together, they underlie debilitating syndromes such as fatigue, anorexia and cachexia. Understanding these pathophysiologies in human patients with cancer requires integrated, longitudinal measurements of host physiology and tumor biology. Cancer cachexia (herein, ‘cachexia’) is a paraneoplastic metabolic syndrome characterized by progressive, unintentional weight loss3,5,6 accompanied by muscle wasting7 that affects approximately half of all patients with cancer3,8. Cachexia is associated with reduced quality of life9,10, premature termination of therapy, increased treatment complications and elevated risk of death11,12,13. Despite its prevalence and well-acknowledged consequences for morbidity and mortality, the underlying causes of cachexia are poorly understood.

People with lived experience of mental health conditions must have a meaningful role in shaping the policies, programmes and services that affect their lives, the Ministry of Health and Food Safety (MoHFS) and WHO Country Office for Nepal emphasized as they marked World Mental Health Day under the theme “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change”. Speaking at the event, Dr Allison Gocotano, Acting WHO Representative to Nepal, highlighted the barriers many people in Nepal continue to face in accessing quality mental health care, despite progress in recognizing mental health as a public health priority. Dr Gocotano called for accessible, quality-assured and rights-based services, stronger collaboration across sectors, and the integration of mental health and psychosocial support into emergency response and recovery. World Mental Health Day marked at the premises of National Health Training Center, Ministry of Health and Food Safety, in Nepal.

In Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam, PATH and local health partners are strengthening primary health care by connecting communities, health workers, and digital tools for earlier detection and long-term management of cardiometabolic diseases. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and metabolic disorders, are now the leading causes of death in Vietnam, accounting for about 81 percent of all deaths each year. Yet for many people, especially those living farther from health facilities, opportunities for early screening and ongoing care remain limited. At the primary health care (PHC) level, services have traditionally focused heavily on hypertension, with conditions such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, and obesity receiving less attention. Health workers also face fragmented information systems, with paper records and disconnected digital platforms making it difficult to follow patients across the continuum of care.

Kristaps Porzingis and the Golden State Warriors provided updates on the star's health status on Wednesday after he returned to the team's practice facility on Tuesday to meet with general manager Mike Dunleavy and vice president of player health and performance Rick Celebrini amid his ongoing absence from the team.

NEW YORK/PANAMA CITY, 12 October 2026 - UNICEF estimates that 38,000 people, including 8,300 children, are in need of humanitarian assistance following the earthquake that struck Panama on October 9. The 7.5-magnitude earthquake caused damage to homes, schools, health facilities, and critical water and transport infrastructure. Assessments remain ongoing, with major impacts confirmed in the provinces of Veraguas, Coclé, Herrera and Los Santos. “Three days after the earthquake, children and families continue to experience fear and distress as aftershocks persist, with thousands of children in the hardest-hit communities facing disruptions to essential services, including safe water and education,” said UNICEF Representative in Panama, Olga Isaza. “UNICEF is working closely with the Government of Panama and partners to support affected children and families in the weeks ahead.”Children’s access to education has been disrupted. According to preliminary government reports, 656 educational facilities have sustained damage nationwide, and classes were suspended on October 12 while structural safety inspections continue.

UVA Health is expanding its advanced cardiovascular care capabilities as the first healthcare system in Virginia to offer a dedicated robotic cardiac surgery program. Led by Michael Ibrahim, MD, director of robotic cardiac surgery at UVA Health, the program brings cutting-edge, minimally invasive options for valve patients right now across Virginia and beyond. While robotic heart surgery was once limited to simple procedures, the program at UVA Health covers a broad spectrum of complex valve conditions as well as atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease. The team's inaugural procedure demonstrated the clinical value of bringing this advanced technology to UVA Health. Rather than facing a traditional open-chest operation, the patient successfully underwent a robotic mitral valve repair. "This first patient was somewhere kind of in the middle. She had complex valve disease and was considering a transcatheter therapy versus surgery, “ says Ibrahim. “Because we were able to use surgery without having to open the chest, that's what she went with. And surgery is generally more durable and more definitively corrective than transcatheter therapy," he notes.

As more and more people turn to AI chatbots for quick, 24/7 medical advice, a new perspective paper co-authored by faculty at Binghamton University explores the risks this practice carries that are largely invisible to users – and healthcare systems. The paper, written by researchers at Binghamton University, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, and Indiana University, and published in Nature Health, examines what happens when a chatbot gives someone bad health advice. The authors argue that the harm is hard to catch because the conversation stays on the AI company's platform, the person has no place to report the problem, and outside researchers cannot measure the damage. “We’re getting medical advice from these chatbots, but nobody—literally no one—is looking at this. If there’s an error or an issue, there’s just no way for people to know,” said Kaicheng Yang, an assistant professor in the School of Computing at Binghamton University’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science and one of the paper’s authors. The researchers gave the example of a 60-year-old man who asked ChatGPT how to cut chloride from his diet and swapped table salt with sodium bromide.

Information is current as of September 28, 2026. Public health recommendations and local respiratory-virus activity can change. COVID-19 continues to circulate year-round, and increases can occur in late summer and during the fall and winter respiratory-virus season. The good news is that practical steps, including staying up to date on vaccination when eligible, testing when symptoms develop and seeking treatment early if you are at higher risk, can lower the chance of severe illness.