‘I skip meals to make my insulin last’: the cost of diabetes in the global south

The three firms that control the insulin market are to cut costs in the US, but elsewhere users can spend all their pay to get the life-saving drug

‘I ration my insulin every month,” says Khushi Ahuja, a law student from Delhi who has type 1 diabetes and relies on human insulin manufactured by the US company Eli Lilly to manage her condition. While insulin is available at no cost in some public hospitals in India, it is mostly up to individuals to buy the drug.

“Every month I hear about insulin prices rising and I feel guilty about burdening my parents,” Ahuja says. “I skip meals to make my insulin last longer.”

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Covid has not affected people’s happiness around world, study reveals

World Happiness Report finds higher levels of benevolence in all global regions than before the pandemic

It claimed 6.7 million lives, locked down entire countries and triggered a global economic slump, but Covid-19 has not affected humankind’s happiness, an international study has found.

Interviews with more than 100,000 people across 137 countries found significantly higher levels of benevolence in all global regions than before the pandemic. And when asked to evaluate their lives on a scale of one to 10, people on average gave scores just as high in the 2020-22 Covid years as in 2017-19.

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Challenges of recruiting nurses from Nepal | Letters

Radha Adhikari highlights the difficulties for healthcare workers in Nepal and the UK, both of which have shortages

Re your article on recruiting nurses from Nepal by Pete Pattisson and Pramod Acharya (‘If we leave, Nepal will suffer’: embattled hospitals fear impact of UK job offers, 14 March), the global healthcare systems face unprecedented workforce pressures, and international nurse recruitment and migration policy experts suggest this will continue.

As a Nepali nurse with almost 30 years’ healthcare sector experience, I think that both authors accurately and pertinently highlight the key issues and sad truth around the UK government’s plan to recruit nurses from Nepal. However, there are a few additional points worth raising about source and destination countries: the two dimensions of international recruitment and migration.

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New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.

Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.

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New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.

Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.

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‘If we leave, Nepal will suffer’: embattled hospitals fear impact of UK job offers

As Nepali nurses weigh up the benefits of an NHS salary, any staff drain will worsen shortages in the country’s creaking healthcare system

The emergency department at Kathmandu’s Bir hospital is already packed with patients, but still they come, in wheelchairs and on stretchers, filling every space. A man is lifted off a bed, still attached to three tubes, to make room for a new arrival. Another is handed an oxygen mask from a fellow patient. Security guards man the sliding metal entrance gates to try to control the flow.

“It’s very difficult. Always busy – even more than this. Sometimes, [there’s] two or three to a bed,” says nurse Shalu Chand, squeezing between two patients on trolleys as she rushes to fit a saline drip. “The workload is too much and the salary too little.”

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WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia

Child died and father tested positive for H5N1, prompting fears of possible person-to-person transmission

The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported an 11-year-old girl from Prey Veng province had died from H5N1, with subsequent testing of 12 of her contacts revealing that her father also had the virus.

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‘A place of healing’: comfort for young cancer patients amid Sri Lanka’s economic crisis

The families of sick children have been pushed into poverty to access the country’s severely limited care services. Now a refuge is about to open its doors

Despite a combined economic crisis and drug shortage, Sri Lanka is poised to open its first children’s palliative care centre – and also hopes to vastly improve the country’s poor survival rates for child cancer.

The centre will offer end-of-life care as well as a place to stay for families who have to travel long distances to the country’s only paediatric oncology ward in the capital, Colombo.

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Taliban bans contraception calling use a ‘western conspiracy’

Reports that fighters have threatened those issuing birth control medicines come as Afghan midwives and activists warn of impact on women’s health and rights

Taliban fighters have stopped the sale of contraceptives in two of Afghanistan’s main cities, claiming their use by women is a western conspiracy to control the Muslim population.

The Guardian has learned that the Taliban has been going door to door, threatening midwives and ordering pharmacies to clear their shelves of all birth control medicines and devices.

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WHO urges action after cough syrups linked to more than 300 child deaths

Deaths in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan due to kidney injury associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said

The World Health Organization has called for “immediate and concerted action” to protect children from contaminated medicines after a spate of child deaths linked to cough syrups last year.

In 2022, more than 300 children - mainly aged under 5 - in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died of acute kidney injury, in deaths that were associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.

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‘A lifeline’: mental health camps bring peace of mind to thousands in rural Assam

India’s severe shortage of mental health professionals and treatment funding leaves many patients without options. But a pioneering programme is working to get lives back on track

It is Saturday morning, and some 40 people on foot, bikes and rickshaws begin trickling into Kuklung village. They take a seat outside a single-storey building and wait to see the psychiatrist at a monthly treatment camp for people with mental health conditions.

The camp is providing a lifeline to this remote, impoverished community in Assam, in northeastern India.

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Labor flags wastewater tests on inbound planes as mandatory Covid checks for China arrivals resumes

Health minister defends country-specific testing as necessary due to ‘absence of comprehensive information’ on Covid’s spread in China

Australia is planning to introduce wastewater testing for incoming flights in an attempt to gather more information about the possible entry of new Covid variants.

The health minister, Mark Butler, announced the measure on Monday in a round of interviews defending the decision to reimpose pre-flight Covid testing for passengers from China as necessary because of a “absence of comprehensive information” about the disease in China.

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UK ministers under pressure to screen China arrivals for Covid

Politicians and experts call for border testing to be introduced, but others question usefulness of move

Ministers are coming under pressure to screen arrivals from China as the number of Covid-19 cases there continues to surge after Beijing’s abrupt decision to end most of its strict pandemic restrictions.

The US became the latest country to impose controls on travellers entering the country from China on Wednesday, demanding that all such arrivals show proof of a negative Covid test.

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‘We are all exposed to it’: the human face of India’s asbestos timebomb

Experts say country’s vulnerability to asbestos-related diseases is putting the health of millions of people at risk

For 40 years, Mohammad Younus worked at a factory that manufactured asbestos sheets in the southern Indian city of Coimbatore. By the time he was in his 50s, his body started giving up.

Asbestos dust had clogged his lungs, doctors told his family. Younus had tuberculosis and lung cancer. He died in 2021, aged 59. His wife and two sisters, who lived with Younus in a company apartment at the factory, have been diagnosed with asbestosis.

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Chinese doctors and nurses reportedly told to work while infected as Covid surges

Some Beijing hospitals have as many as 80% of staff infected, according to one doctor, leading to serious staff shortages

Chinese doctors and nurses are being told to keep working even when infected with Covid-19, staff and residents reported, as the virus rips through the population in the wake of eased restrictions.

Some hospitals in Beijing have up to 80% of their staff infected, but many of them are still required to work due to staff shortages, a doctor in a large public hospital in Beijing told Reuters, adding he had spoken to his peers at other big hospitals in the capital.

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