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Two children of an American Ebola patient look through a window at their father in the isolation ward, at the Charite hospital in Berlin, Germany, on May 21, 2026.

Ebola Recalls Why the U.S. Needs a Foreign Health Service

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The Trump administration is right that U.S. health diplomacy needs stronger leadership, but turning the CDC into a vendor is the wrong path

A map titled "Where the 2026 Ebola Outbreak is Spreading" shows confirmed and suspected cases of Bundibugyo virus disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda as of June 1, 2026. Affected regions are shaded in salmon/orange-red, and affected cities are marked with black dots. Ituri Province in northeastern DRC is labeled as having seen the most cases and is the largest highlighted region. Additional affected areas in DRC include militia-controlled Goma in North Kivu and areas near Bukavu in South Kivu. In Uganda, Kampala is marked as having confirmed nine cases. A small inset map shows the location of the outbreak region within the broader African continent. Source: Ministry of Health, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Charting Ebola Responses: How 2026 Stacks Up After Aid Cuts

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An Ebola outbreak circulating undetected for weeks or months is a collective failure of global health security, regardless of cause

Centering Women, Children, and Adolescents in Global Health Reform

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In an era of fiscal pressure, omission does not produce neutrality; it can produce retrenchment by default

Health workers attend to a mother and her infant at the Mother and Child Hospital, in Kasoa, Ghana, on November 19, 2025.

Public Health as Diplomacy: China's Southeast Asia Strategy

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China's contributions to Southeast Asia grow more significant as the United States scales back its global health commitments

Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects an honor guard during the official welcoming ceremony at the national palace, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on April 16, 2025.

As Defunded HIV Programs Thin, Uneven Resilience Emerges

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The latest data for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief shows how HIV programs are scaling back on epidemic control

An HIV patient places her hand on her forehead during a visit by a caregiver at her home, in Lusaka, Zambia, on April 17, 2012.

China's Health Silk Road and Soft Power

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Understanding China's previous engagement on health development can inform its future strategy as the United States pulls back

Line chart titled "China's Health Aid, 2000–23" showing inflation-adjusted Chinese health commitments to low- and middle-income countries in 2023 U.S. dollars. Aid remained mostly below $400 million from 2000 to 2004, then spiked to approximately $1.3 billion in 2005 following a large loan for Cuban hospitals, before falling back to under $400 million through 2014. After China introduced the Health Silk Road in 2015, aid rose to roughly $700 million in 2016, then fluctuated between $400–500 million through 2020. Aid surged dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking near $2.4 billion around 2021–2022, then dropped sharply to near zero in 2023. Source: AidData

Global Health Reform for Communities Beyond Institutions

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Much of global health progress has been driven by small teams, writes the head of Expertise France's major pandemics cluster

Community health workers prepare vaccines for a measles vaccination drive amid a surge in cases, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, on February 25, 2026.

How the Iran War Could Drive a Historic Hunger Crisis

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Acute hunger threatens 45 million if the conflict extends into June. A roadmap from the Ukraine War could contain the humanitarian fallout

A woman from the indigenous Turkana Nilotic community pours sorghum grains into a sack, at a World Food Program food distribution center, at the Kenya Oil village near Lodwar, in Turkana County, Kenya, on February 17, 2026.

How the Iran War Is Straining Humanitarian Aid, in Three Charts

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Aid organizations face meandering shipping routes and soaring fuel costs beyond the price of gasoline

Map titled “Shipping Aid in Wartime” showing how food shipments to Port Sudan are rerouted because of the Iran War. A solid dark line marks the typical route from Nhava Sheva, India, across the Arabian Sea, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and Red Sea, to Port Sudan, with labels for Salalah, Jeddah, Suez Canal, and Port Sudan. A dashed orange line shows the alternate route looping south across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip, and back up West Africa and the Mediterranean before reaching the Red Sea. A note on the map says ships avoiding the Bab-el-Mandeb take this longer route. Caption states that rerouting can add 6,000 miles and more than three weeks of transit time.

The Expanded Global Gag Rule and the Case for Regional Solidarity

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The anti-abortion policy undermines organizing principles, rooted in ubuntu, that keep African health systems coherent under stress

A woman gazes out of a window while attending a talk on sexual health and HIV prevention, in the Tanghin neighborhood of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on April 13, 2013.

Multilane Procurement Amid the America First Health Agenda

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Health procurement in low- and middle-income countries will remain unavoidably multilane. Donors should build around that reality

An Ethiopian Cargo terminal worker offloads a shipment of Johnson and Johnson's COVID-19 vaccines that arrived under the COVAX scheme, at the Bole International Airport, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 19, 2021.

Sustaining Tuberculosis Innovations to Counter Foreign Aid Cuts

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A new World Health Organization policy allows for portable TB testing, which could help close massive gaps in disease surveillance

A man is treated for tuberculosis, at the Muniz public hospital, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on January 11, 2019.