Keat Looi News Today

Chelsea Polis, who won the 2023 Maddox prize early career award, explains how she was sued for identifying a mis-sold medical device—and why, in an age of disinformation, researchers and clinicians must call out wrongdoing when they see it. Mun-Keat Looi reports When Chelsea Polis questioned the evidence behind a fertility tracking thermometer, she soon found herself a defendant in a lawsuit. In 2020 Polis, an epidemiologist, was sued for publicly sharing her scientific and regulatory concerns...

Europe is facing a staggering shortage of doctors and other healthcare workers. Mun-Keat Looi looks at the extent of the problem and what is being done to tackle it “There is no health without a health workforce,” says Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe for the World Health Organization. But this is exactly what the European Union is facing. In 2022, a WHO report drawing on data from over 50 countries showed the overwhelming extent of the health workforce shortage in the region.1 “We...

A new WHO report outlines the financial hardship many people fall into because of the cost of healthcare—and explains the political tweaks that could help them. Mun-Keat Looi reports “Is it acceptable that people become poor as a result of ill health?” asks Tamas Evetovits, head of the World Health Organization’s Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing. “Acceptable or not, this is what we see across the European region.” Increasing numbers of people in Europe and central Asia a...

Mosquitoes infected with bacteria are becoming a cost-effective way to stop some of the greatest disease threats in the world, including dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses. Mun-Keat Looi visits the sites where these are “made” The stench of pond water is overwhelming. In this room in a nondescript warehouse, millions of tiny dots squiggle across drawer upon drawer of water packed almost as high as the ceiling. This is the World Mosquito Programme’s (WMP) breeding facility in Medellin, C...