This edition of The Health Wrap travels far and wide, from wintry Sydney to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and also to the United States, where science and scientists continue to face tough times.
Dr Lesley Russell also details a raft of new discoveries in cancer treatments, and delivers a stack of recommended reading.
The quotable?
Compassion, not economic statistics, should guide government policy and define the public interest.”
Lesley Russell writes:
It’s a busy time in wintry Sydney with lots to see and do. There’s the annual Archibald, Wynne, Sulman Prizes exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales – and also the children’s Archies which are wonderful – and the Vivid Festival.
These brighten our lives – in the case of Vivid, literally – and serve to offset the ongoing dramas from the United States, concerns about where the Ebola outbreak is headed, and the post-Budget political fights in Australia.
Ebola concerns and questions
This is an update of my article published by Croakey on 2 June, Growing concerns about Ebola preparedness and responses.
Up-to-date tracking of the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda has suddenly got more difficult as DRC, the Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are now only reporting confirmed cases and deaths and the capacity for such testing and the essential follow-up tracking is currently limited.
The 7 June report from the DRC’s National Institute for Public Health has the confirmed case count at 544 and the death toll among confirmed cases at 88, with 20 people reported as recovered. Only 63 percent of case contacts have been followed (this includes 92 new cases since 4 June).
The 6 June report from Uganda has 19 confirmed cases (14 imported and five local transmission) and two confirmed deaths.
The most recent report from the Africa CDC is dated 2 June. As such it is not particularly useful, except that it does note 259 suspected deaths, highlighting ongoing uncertainty and the need for enhanced diagnostic capacity.
Reporting from the WHO also lags; the most recent figures are for 31 May.
The US CDC reports 452 confirmed cases and 82 confirmed deaths in DRC (4 June) and 19 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths in Uganda (5 June).
Modelling by the US CDC shows that cases over the next three months may exceed 20,000. The actual number will depend on how quickly infected patients can be tested and isolated.
Even with a case count that has been revised down with the testing of suspected cases, this Ebola outbreak is concerningly large and control efforts are insufficient.
Anyone with symptoms that could be Ebola (or malaria or cholera) is a suspect pending testing. The practical challenge is to screen the large numbers of people with these symptoms quickly enough to prevent further spread (and before they leave isolation/treatment facilities).
Current testing is done using PCR which, even if automated, does not have the throughput needed for this scale of screening; rapid antigen tests are urgently needed. As outlined in a New York Times article, only rapid testing can control this outbreak.
There is optimism that may not be warranted from the WHO. Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said testing was improving with scaled-up laboratory and diagnostic capacity, though contact tracing in DRC was not yet “where it needs to be”.
“The outbreak had a big head start, and we’re still behind, but under the leadership of the government of DRC, we’re catching up,” he said.
But Medicines sans Frontieres (MSF), which has people on the ground in Ituri province, presents a different picture: “Testing capacity remains insufficient, and hundreds of samples are still awaiting processing in laboratories. Isolation and care capacity are also insufficient.
“All of this is impeding the rapid scale-up of the response and creating legitimate anxieties and fears among communities.”
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167667
Ebola continues to spread. There are reports that it has reached DRC territory held by Islamic State – a place too dangerous for health workers – and that infection is an increasing threat for Pygmy Indigenous Peoples, who live a nomadic life mostly in the Congo Basin.
There are several reports of attacks on Ebola burial teams, raising fears of transmission of infections and in Uganda, one of five prisoners being treated for Ebola symptoms has escaped.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is urging governments strengthen cross-border coordination to contain the ongoing Ebola outbreak, warning that border closures alone risk driving movements underground and increasing transmission risks.
At this time Uganda and Rwanda’s borders with the DRC are closed. That hinders the transportation of needed equipment, tests and medicines.
In an article in The Washington Post, a former United Nations Under Secretary General, who led the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response in 2014-2016, writes about the coordinated response and massive deployment of resources he sees as essential for managing this epidemic.
As I am writing this, reports come through that the Africa CDC and WHO have launched a US$ 518 million joint preparedness and response plan for the Bundibugyo virus outbreak.
The six-month plan, covering June to November 2026, aims to strengthen all outbreak response measures and complements national response plans by DRC and Uganda.
More funding announced
In May, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund announced it was allocating up to US$60 million to accelerate the response to the Ebola outbreak.
The Pandemic Fund, established by the G20 and other donors including the World Bank, has announced a US$220.6 million package to be delivered through a combination of reprogramming resources from existing country and regional projects and fast-tracking the approval of projects currently under preparation.
This funding will go to both affected and at-risk countries including South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
The United States claims to be the largest financial contributor to the Ebola response effort. To date, some US$162 million has been provided for the outbreak and there is an additional US$350 million provided through the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan for broader humanitarian efforts in the affected region.
The United Kingdom has recently announced the commitment of up to £5 million to support research and development of new treatments and rapid diagnostics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, and to generate the evidence needed for an informed outbreak response, including through social and behavioural science research
This follows last month’s allocation of up to £21 million in funding to contain the deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC.
Last week the Australian Government announced it is providing AU$5 million to support the global response to the Ebola outbreak and help prevent the spread of the disease. This funding will be directed through the International Federation of the Red Cross and the WHO.
Finally, there is another important donation to note. Starlink has donated 150 internet kits to the Africa CDC to provided much needed high-speed connectivity in Ebola-hit areas in DRC.
Meanwhile, in the United States, a number of infectious disease experts have sent an open letter to Congress raising concerns about the Trump Administration’s plan to send Americans with potential Ebola exposure to a temporary facility in Kenya instead of returning them to the United States for treatment in specially designed facilities.
“Americans who volunteer to serve on the frontlines of outbreaks should not have to wonder whether they will be able to return home if they become ill.” The letter outlines the problems with the proposed Kenyan facility. “These capabilities cannot be recreated in a matter of days or weeks,” the authors wrote.
Plans to open a 50-bed facility on a Kenya Air Force base have been blocked, at least temporarily, by a Kenyan high court. But the US Embassy in Kenya says it is “actively working with the Kenyan Government to resolve any objections and communicate our shared objectives to the Kenyan people.”
[Note that this media release from the US Embassy in Nairobi actually says that the United States is “working in tandem with Kenya and international partners to enhance protocols for detection and spread [sic] of this deadly disease.” Clearly carefully not proof-read!]Reuters reports that work on the facility continues and around twenty flights from the United States carrying medical equipment and specialist staff have landed in Kenya.
Professor Lawrence Goslin and Professor Sam Halabi from Georgetown University have spoken out about how the United States under Trump has looked to abandon the “highest duty” of support for WHO efforts that would prevent and address such disease outbreaks and how WHO is handling such attempts to walk away.
Update on Australia’s response to Ebola: Aside from the announcement of funding support (see above), there is no news to report.
An opinion piece in The Age from Professor Brendan Crabb does serve notice that we should invest in preparedness for whatever new epidemics and infectious disease threats we will inevitably confront in the future.
Ongoing need for services
Countries like DRC must deal with an outbreak of Ebola at a time when more than 250,000 people are in the country as displaced refugees from neighbouring countries and amid other health threats including malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
“Routine” healthcare – the provision of antenatal support, ensuring that people with tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes have ongoing access to care and medicines, and vaccination programs for childhood disease – must continue, even as healthcare workers and hospitals are over-stretched.
UNAIDS is supporting efforts to maintain uninterrupted HIV treatment and care services as the Ebola outbreak continues to evolve.
This will become increasingly important as the Trump Administration implements changes it has just announced to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program.
The State Department claims that this “America First” approach will disrupt a “culture of dependency” in how American global health programs currently operate. But there are concerns this will mean that health assistance from the United States could mean demanding access to poor countries’ resources, like key minerals.
Role for China
China has solidified its position as Africa’s premier partner by combining strategic investments with targeted humanitarian and medical relief, even as the United States under Trump has pivoted toward a commercial, resource-extraction-focused approach and drastically cut traditional aid.
China has been stepping up visible contributions to global institutions and positioning itself to become a bigger presence in global health and development. For example, in May China announced a $500 million donation to the WHO, in addition to its yearly dues. That stands in stark contrast to the United States, which has withdrawn from the UN without paying owed dues.
Last week there was an announcement that a Chinese medical team is in Uganda to deliver expert medical services.
An article in The New York Times looks at the possibility of China stepping up and playing a major role in tackling the epidemic.
But interesting, while outlining the many ways China could be involved, the article finds it is unclear how much China (always cautious and strategic) is willing to do. It argues that, with the United States playing a sharply diminished role, China faces less competitive pressure to step up.
Mutual benefits
An article in MedPage Today outlines the enormous benefits (as calculated in a 2025 Kiel Institute Working Paper) that donor countries themselves receive from giving health aid.
In other words, the benefits to donors go far beyond averting the devastation of regional or global outbreaks. For example, investments in controlling antimicrobial resistance benefit recipient and donor countries by slowing down the global spread of drug-resistant infections and through development of new antimicrobials.
Donor countries also reap reputational “soft power” benefits. For example, a study of the impact of PEPFAR on public opinion found much more favourable opinions of the United States after the introduction of this program.
And investing aid into global health research and development – developing new medicines, vaccines, and diagnostic s– both improves health in developing countries and benefits donor nations by supporting their industrial sectors and domestic job creation.
Fallout from vaccine changes and scepticism
At the end of last year, President Trump ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct a scientific assessment that compared United States childhood immunisation recommendations with those of peer nations.
The assessment from the CDC recommended reducing the number of childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11 – a move that has sparked heavy criticism from health experts and organisations.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has released its own vaccine recommendations, breaking significantly with the CDC’s guidance. It continues to recommend routine immunisation for protection against 18 diseases, including RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, influenza and meningococcal disease.
At the end of last month, Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the CDC and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to review the assessment as well as the latest clinical data and to “take any appropriate steps to update the United States childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule.”
In a fact sheet accompanying Friday’s executive order, the White House said: “President Trump is reaffirming his commitment to gold-standard science, ensuring Americans receive the best possible medical advice, and empowering patients and doctors with maximum flexibility.”
The combined effects of growing public scepticism about vaccines and confusing, advice from senior health officials based on ideology rather than science, is delivering severe consequences – in a surprisingly short time frame.
The New York Times reports that doctors around the United States are seeing more cases of serious, sometimes life-threatening illnesses that are preventable by vaccination, including whooping cough, pneumonia and meningitis.
The consequences of outbreaks of childhood diseases like measles reach far beyond those who fall ill. A study from researchers at Stanford University found that a recent measles outbreak in Texas, led to a sharp and disproportionate rise in student absences, not only among children who were sick, but across affected schools where children were kept home as a precaution. You can read more here.
American science faces more political scrutiny
The Trump Administration has released a sweeping, 400-page proposal to overhaul the regulation for all federal grants, seeking to codify tighter political control of federally-funded research.
The proposed changes would downgrade the role of peer review in determining what work to fund, limit the ability of scientists to use federal funds to publish their research or travel to conferences, and offer political appointees more latitude to terminate grants at will.
The scientific research community is very concerned, characterising these changes as the White House attempting to usurp autonomy from scientists and career civil servants.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America said that, if finalised, the new rule (which seems to have been generated at the Office of Management and Budget) “would replace scientific merit with McCarthy-era politics,” and called on Congress to block this.
Administration officials say the changes are necessary to make government-funded science more transparent and to cut back on waste, fraud, and abuse.
Currently all grants approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for funding must go through additional screening by Health and Human Services which has often asked for substantive changes to the research.
In a sign of how Orwellian things have become in the United States (and how courageous scientists must be to resist this), last week senior diabetes researchers were ejected from a conference after handing out copies of an editorial criticising the Trump Administration’s handling of biomedical research.
The editorial, headed ‘Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!’ is here.
There is more concerning news on the American science front. A poll conducted in February of over 2,000 Americans reveals a critical paradox: misinformation about science is rampant and a striking number of young adults distrust traditional experts for science and health information. But Americans across the political spectrum remain united in their belief that science is essential for progress.
Among 18 to 24 year olds, 48 percent blame medical doctors and 43 percent blame scientists for spreading science and health misinformation.
More young adults would trust a friend with “first-hand experience” (80 percent), than they would trust scientists (75 percent ). You can read more here.
Cancer news
To offset all the bad news above and to make the case that investments in research can have big payoffs – sometimes where least expected – there’s a raft of new discoveries in cancer treatments.
A great advance in treating pancreatic cancer
If you follow the medical news, then you will have heard about the big breakthrough in treatment for pancreatic cancer which was greeted with a standing ovation at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting.
A clinical trial of a new drug – daraxonrasib – shows that it is keeping patients with pancreatic cancer (a dreadful diagnosis) alove for twice as long as current treatments with fewer side effects.
The results were simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Oncologists who have traditionally had few options and little hope to offer patients are calling the results “unprecedented,” “compelling” and “spectacular.” You can read more here.
A recent article in The Bulwark outlines how long-term investments in research – the very areas the Trump Administration is gutting – eventually deliver a big breakthrough.
Breakthroughs in lung cancer treatment
Adelaide University researchers have developed a novel nanoparticle that acts as a delivery vehicle to precisely target cancer drugs to the lungs while helping to limit harmful side effects.
This dramatically improve how cancer drugs behave in the body, increasing their bioavailability by more than 30-fold while helping reduce their exposure to healthy organs.
In further news on lung cancer, early research published in Cell from a team of more than 80 researchers working across four continents has identified a set of proteins in the blood that accurately predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis.
The scientists also found early evidence that an existing anti-inflammatory drug could significantly reduce lung cancer risk in people with elevated concentrations of these proteins, which are linked to inflammation. You can read more here.
A vaccine against skin cancer
A personalised mRNA vaccine in development by Merck and Moderna has halved the risk of melanoma returning after five years. You can read more here and here.
Role for GLP-1 drugs in cancer prevention and treatment?
Studies released in recent weeks are fuelling optimism about a potential role for GLP-1 drugs in cancer prevention and treatment.
At this year’s ASCO meeting, more than 40 studies, abstracts, oral presentations and poster presentations examined the relationship between GLP-1-based drugs and cancer. The results suggest that people taking medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro may develop certain cancers at lower rates than comparable patients who are not taking the drugs — and that those already diagnosed may experience a slower decline and better outcomes.
You can read more here.
Does mRNA COVID-19 vaccine help fight cancer?
A retrospective study of 884 patients on immunotherapy treatments for lung cancer found that the survival rate of those who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was almost twice that of those who did not get the vaccine.
It’s thought that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines help fight cancer by priming and “supercharging” the immune system, making conventional cancer immunotherapies significantly more effective.
A recent article in The Conversation looks at how mRNA vaccines could transform cancer treatment and prevention and how misinformation about these vaccines threatens this potential.
Prevention – the case for urgent reform
In a recent article in Health Services Daily, Dr Alison Roberts and Dr Angela Jackson (the Productivity Commissioners who led the Inquiry into Delivering Quality Care More Efficiently) write what so many who work in health and healthcare are constantly thinking: while governments have long acknowledged the value of prevention in the care sector, it’s rarely reflected systematically in their budgets.
They make the case that the need for reforms that support greater investment in prevention and early intervention is becoming increasingly urgent.
They propose a National Prevention and Early Intervention Framework that would give practical effect to the Australian government’s Measuring What Matters Framework by linking spending more directly to long-term outcomes.
A second article in this journal argues that Prevention is a fiscal problem, Dr Chalmers, so treat it like one. It makes the case that prevention risks being one of the biggest unexamined failures in health system history and that makes it not just a problem but a reform imperative.
In an earlier article, this same author said this: “In healthcare we seem to have a collective delusion that prevention is a wicked, maybe even whimsical, problem, so while we pay much homage to the idea we never get too serious about trying to actually crack it. But, maybe we’re collectively deluding ourselves about how wicked it actually is.”
I looked at the up-front articles on Croakey’s website and the topics (diphtheria, illicit tobacco, extreme weather, toxic industries, Ebola) clearly indicate why prevention should always be top-of-mind for health policy development and funding.
In case you missed it
A selection of interesting new findings.
Polio outbreak in Papua-New Guinea
Papua-New Guinea is addressing the country’s first polio outbreak in eight years – a major setback for a country declared polio-free in 2000.
You can read more here.
COVID-19 infection increases cognitive decline
A large study of 146,416 adults shows that individuals with a COVID-19 infection history had a higher prevalence of subjective cognitive decline than individuals with no COVID-19 infection history.
Participants reporting current cigarette smoking and COVID-19 infection history had a significantly higher prevalence of subjective cognitive decline concerns.
The Policy Recipe series
A three-part series from The Mandarin on policy-making is thought-provoking reading.
- The policy recipe series, part 1: when dinosaurs roamed
- The policy recipe series, part 2: providing policy advice
- The policy recipe series, part 3: The ingredients.
War and famine
A recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine looks at how food can become a “quiet weapon of war” – despite that fact that deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited by international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(xxv), and United Nations Security Council resolution 2417.
It highlights that immunodeficiency from starvation is as deadly as any pandemic virus. Every organ system of the body is affected. These impacts are currently seen in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Healthcare reform in Australia
As Independent Member of the House of Representative, Dt Monique Ryan recently wrote in The Saturday Paper, Australia’s health system needs a fundamental reset (paywalled).
She writes: “Until there’s political courage to rebuild rather than repair, we’ll keep failing patients.”
One particular area where courage and reform is needed is addressing the huge out-of-pocket fees for specialists’ services.
At recent Senate Estimates, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing officials were questioned about specialist fees, diagnostic imaging costs, and affordability pressures facing patients.
They confirmed the Department will consult on whether excessive specialist fees should be regulated as it develops options to address growing concerns about out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
Health Minister Mark Butler has previously flagged a willingness to consider reforms, including constitutional limitations. (Read more on this matter in the latest edition of The Zap).
Let’s see what happens. Not holding my breath!
Indigenous news
Gundungurra academic Dr Crystal Arnold from the University of Wollongong has produced the winning entry in the British Ecological Society’s Rachel Carson Prize with a paper that challenges conventional weed control methodology.
Arnold drew from Aboriginal knowledge in her study of the Shoalhaven River on the NSW South Coast. Her report, How can we re-envision care for weeds? Indigenous weed management on the Shoalhaven River, sees weeds as having a place in ecosystems, rather than something only to be removed.
It integrates First Peoples knowledge into environmental science informed by community engagement and fieldwork.
Best of Croakey
Divisive comments from politicians around migration and immigrants is having profound consequences for the mental health and wellbeing of many in Australia’s multicultural community.
Politicians and others who spread anti-immigrant rhetoric should be held accountable for their actions and their impact.
Read Anti-migrant rhetoric is a health hazard by my Croakey colleague Jason Staines.
The good news story
Picking up on the issues raised under Prevention above, I really liked the approach taken in a recent article in The Mandarin, which makes the case that a focus on economic statistics (like the budget deficit, GDP and inflation) crowds out other metrics such as trust in institutions, medical health, life satisfaction and disaster preparedness.
It states: “The macro-economic indicators track what has happened and, to a lesser extent, what is now happening, but are unfit to serve as goals: they are simply tools. It is worse than that. The assertion diverts focus away from alternative guiding principles such as public interest, equality, fairness or compassion.”
And continues: “Governing in the interests of the people requires compassionate concern for the well-being of people.”
You may not agree with all of this, but I like the proposal that “compassion, not economic statistics, should guide government policy and define the public interest”.
Let’s hope some government mandarins give this article a thoughtful read.
Croakey thanks and acknowledges Dr Lesley Russell for providing this column as a probono service to our readers. Follow her on Twitter at @LRussellWolpe.
Previous editions of The Health Wrap can be read here.
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