Most people leave doctor visits with prescriptions, but still feel unsure—instructions make sense, but no one asks about their life. In contrast, when a provider knows your name, remembers your story, and explains care in a way that fits you, the experience feels different—and that difference matters.
Colombia's trade ministry has announced it will raise tariffs on neighbouring Ecuador to 100 percent from 30 percent, matching the rate Ecuador set a day earlier amid escalating trade and diplomatic spat.
The IACHR expresses its concern regarding the working conditions faced by some Cuban workers participating in medical missions, highlighting complaints of unfair compensation and excessively long working hours.
Argentina will continue to promote international cooperation in health through bilateral agreements and regional forums, while fully preserving its sovereignty and its capacity to make decisions regarding health policies.
Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions.
Every Sunday in Bogota, streets across the city are closed to cars and transformed into urban parks. Shirtless rollerbladers with boomboxes drift leisurely in figures of eight, Lycra-clad cyclists zoom downhill and young children wobble nervously as they pedal on bikes for the first time. This is perhaps the most visible component of a multipronged plan to clean up the Colombian capital's air.
The directive goes even further, ordering any public health worker who owns or partly owns a private facility to divest within 30 days or face dismissal and possible legal action. The move follows the publication of an investigative report by the Nyasa Times newspaper that uncovered a coordinated system of corruption documented across multiple public hospitals, where patients were routinely forced to pay illegal 'fees' for services that should be free.
Because of budget cuts, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has ended clinical services at seven of its public health clinic sites. As of Feb. 27, the county is no longer providing services such as vaccinations, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, or tuberculosis diagnosis and specialty TB care at the affected locations, according to county officials and a department fact sheet.
Between March 2020 and March 2022, over 100 million telemedicine services were delivered to approximately 17 million Australians. The Australian government invested $409 million to make telehealth permanent, whilst the UK announced £600 million for digital health infrastructure in April 2025. Patient adoption is equally impressive: 60% find telemedicine more convenient than in-person appointments, 55% report higher satisfaction with teleconsultations, and 74% of millennials prefer virtual appointments for routine care. These aren't temporary shifts; they represent a fundamental transformation in healthcare delivery.
Baptist Health Sunrise will be the health network's most innovative hospital, featuring a unique layout, with a medical office building integrated into the hospital and a structure designed to accommodate growth. It will open with 100 inpatient beds, a 30-bed emergency department - and plenty of room to expand on its 26 acres of land. It also includes the latest technology - robotic surgical equipment and AI-enabled imaging.
There is little doubt that this is what African countries need if they are serious about universal health coverage - ensuring that every member of their populations has access to this fundamental human right. But such an approach has never been implemented in Africa. Some of the reasons for this are outlined in a report on health financing by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the continent's public-health agency based in Addis Ababa, published last week (see go.nature.com/3o9wxfc).
If you're smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, should you expect society to pay when you get sick?" He added that while Americans would always have the right to "eat donuts all day," nevertheless, "should you then expect society to care for you when you predictably get very sick at the same level as somebody who was born with a congenital illness?
Asia's healthcare challenges include aging populations, rising disease, and strained infrastructure, but the crisis is better understood at the kitchen table, where families decide what conditions to treat, and what to ignore, according to their savings. While the APAC region makes up 60% of the world's population, the region accounts for a mere 22% of global healthcare spending. According to the World Health Organization, most developing Asian countries spend just 2-3% of GDP on health, and in many cases public
The 340B program allows hospitals to buy outpatient drugs at steep discounts, with the purported purpose of helping them fund care for low-income and uninsured patients. The now-axed rebate model would have invited drugmakers to participate voluntarily in a rebate-based discount system. Basically, instead of the provider receiving a discount upfront at purchase, the 340B discount would be applied after purchase via rebate - and subject to tedious data submission requirements.