The State of Global Health Funding and Pollution Trading in India
August 1, 2025
Editors' Note
On Wednesday, the Indian Space Research Organisation, in partnership with NASA, launched a new satellite for monitoring climate change and natural disasters. The technological achievement comes amid a clean energy boom in the South Asian nation—which this year could overtake the United States as a renewables superpower.
Local governments in India are also moving to release less pollution into the air. One idea involves emissions trading schemes (ETS) that create business incentives to cut pollution more efficiently. Journalist Sushmita Pathak describes one ETS in Surat, a textile hub in the western Indian state of Gujarat, that reduced pollution emissions for participating factories by 20% to 30% and lowered abatement costs.
Next, TGH heads to Colombia, where health journalist Hannah Harris Green offers a tour of the first safe injection sites in Latin America. Harris Green describes how the sites foster client safety and how their success is inspiring a new approach to overdose prevention for surrounding countries.
With the global goal of ending tuberculosis (TB) by 2030 fast approaching, Africa stands at a crossroads. Although TB infections still claim hundreds of thousands of lives across the continent annually, the death toll is dropping. Still, recent foreign aid cuts threaten to reverse that progress. In light of those developments, Africa Regional Cochair of the Global TB Caucus Christopher Kalila calls on African governments to build self-sufficient TB responses that ensure citizens' health does not hinge on foreign goodwill.
Continuing with aid, TGH Associate Data Editor Allison Krugman surveys how the Trump administration's cuts to development assistance for health are reshaping global health governance and programming.
To wrap up, this week's newsletter includes recommendations from our archive about the food and health-care crises in Gaza. See below for details.
Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor
As Israel faces growing international pressure over famine in Gaza, many wonder about the conditions that led to the territory's mass starvation and the destruction of health-care systems. TGH recommends these expert analyses from our recent archives: Health Care Under Fire: How the Middle East Reflects a Global Crisis (July 14, 2025)
