Latest news with #healthfunding
CTV News
2 days ago
- Health
- CTV News
Ottawa spending $2.8M to fight overdose crisis in Atlantic Canada
Minister of Health Marjorie Michel rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Monday, June 2, 2025. The federal government is spending $2.8 million to combat the overdose crisis across Atlantic Canada. Marjorie Michel, minister of health, announced the money will support projects in Fredericton and Miramichi in New Brunswick, Amherst in Nova Scotia and St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador. The money will come from the Emergency Treatment Fund. 'This funding will deliver immediate support where it is needed most,' said Michel. 'We are using every tool available to connect people to care, address urgent local challenges, and keep our communities safe.' The John Howard Society and the City of Fredericton will use the money to expand outreach efforts, adding overnight services for vulnerable populations. The program will deliver supplies, distribute naloxone and offer overdose support. 'By extending outreach efforts into the overnight hours, we aim to ensure that no one is left without access to essential services—regardless of the time of day,' said John Barrow, executive director of the Society. 'These new overnight outreach services will work in close coordination with existing daytime programs, creating a continuous and responsive support system that prioritizes safety, connection to services, and community care.' More to come…
Malay Mail
16-07-2025
- Health
- Malay Mail
Global health aid plunges to 15-year low as US leads cuts in ‘era of austerity'
PARIS, July 17 — Sweeping foreign aid cuts led by the United States will cause international health funding to plummet to the lowest level in 15 years, a study said Wednesday, warning the world has entered a new 'era of global health austerity.' Money that provides healthcare to some of the poorest and most in-need people across the world has been dramatically slashed this year, led by the administration of US President Donald Trump. The new study published in the prestigious Lancet journal also pointed to recent steep aid cuts announced by the UK, France and Germany. After reaching an all-time high of US$80 billion in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the total amount of global health aid will sink to US$39 billion (RM165 billion) this year, the US-led team of researchers estimated. That would be the lowest level since 2009. Such a dramatic change will result in the world entering a new 'era of global health austerity', the authors of the study warned. Sub-Saharan African countries such as Somalia, the war-torn Democratic of Congo and Malawi will be hit worst because most of their health funding currently comes from international aid, according to the study. The funding cuts will have a major impact on the treatment and prevention of a range of diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, it added The US slashed its global health funding by at least 67 per cent in 2025 compared to last year, according to the research. The UK cut its funding by nearly 40 per cent, following by France with 33 per cent and Germany with 12 per cent. The researchers at the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation called for the world to urgently ramp up health aid. They also warned that nations would likely need find other sources of funding. The study was released as AIDS experts meet in Rwanda's capital Kigali for an international conference on HIV science. The US foreign aid cuts alone are estimated to result in the preventable deaths of more than 14 million people by 2030, according to a different Lancet study published earlier this month. For comparison, around 10 million soldiers were killed during World War I. — AFP
Free Malaysia Today
16-07-2025
- Health
- Free Malaysia Today
Global health aid sinks to 15-year low in ‘era of austerity'
According to a Lancet study, a 67% cut in US foreign aid alone is estimated to cause over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030. (EPA Images pic) PARIS : Sweeping foreign aid cuts led by the US will cause international health funding to plummet to the lowest level in 15 years, a study said Wednesday, warning the world has entered a new 'era of global health austerity.' Money that provides healthcare to some of the poorest and most in-need people across the world has been dramatically slashed this year, led by the administration of US President Donald Trump. The new study published in the prestigious Lancet journal also pointed to recent steep aid cuts announced by the UK, France and Germany. After reaching an all-time high of US$80 billion in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the total amount of global health aid will sink to US$39 billion this year, the US-led team of researchers estimated. That would be the lowest level since 2009. Such a dramatic change will result in the world entering a new 'era of global health austerity', the authors of the study warned. Sub-Saharan African countries such as Somalia, the war-torn Democratic of Congo and Malawi will be hit worst because most of their health funding currently comes from international aid, according to the study. The funding cuts will have a major impact on the treatment and prevention of a range of diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, it added The US slashed its global health funding by at least 67% in 2025 compared to last year, according to the research. The UK cut its funding by nearly 40%, following by France with 33% and Germany with 12%. The researchers at the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation called for the world to urgently ramp up health aid. They also warned that nations would likely need find other sources of funding. The study was released as AIDS experts meet in Rwanda's capital Kigali for an international conference on HIV science. The US foreign aid cuts alone are estimated to result in the preventable deaths of more than 14 million people by 2030, according to a different Lancet study published earlier this month. For comparison, around 10 million soldiers were killed during World War I.
Medscape
15-07-2025
- Health
- Medscape
US Cuts Injure Canada's Infectious Disease Surveillance
US President Donald Trump's plans to slash discretionary and research funding to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by as much as 53% have Canadian public health officials and experts worried. One of the most concerning challenges might be the consequent loss of invaluable surveillance efforts and data, Jasmine Pawa, MD, a public health and preventive medicine specialist physician and adjunct lecturer of clinical public health at the University of Toronto, Toronto, told Medscape Medical News. Pawa is co-author of a recently published editorial on the effects of the US federal government's dismantling of the structures that Canada has long relied on to keep its population healthy and safe. Jasmine Pawa, MD 'We wanted to focus specifically on the health data around numbers and how they relate to communicable diseases,' she said. 'In the short term, we're losing access to a lot of information on US websites that we might have referenced or used, and I'm aware that people might now be using archived or older sources.' In the long term, the ability to track pandemic threats or mitigate the spread of diseases like HIV or avian influenza will likely be impaired. 'If those data don't exist, it means that we cannot measure trends,' she said, which, in turn, affects response planning. Communicable Diseases Increasing While US surveillance and data collection have declined, Canada has been facing an infectious disease crisis. The country has seen substantial increases in the rates of preventable sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis; adult infections rose by as much as 109% and congenital syphilis by as much as 599% between 2018 and 2022. New HIV cases have also been a cause for concern, rising by almost 25% between 2021 and 2022. 'We're also seeing a surge in measles cases in Canada, which you could say is an emerging infectious disease, in the sense that it's previously been controlled,' said Zahid Butt, PhD, Canada research chair in Interdisciplinary Research for Pandemic Preparedness at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Butt is especially worried about the spread of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases, including pertussis. 'We're seeing more cases because vaccine coverage is not at optimal levels,' he said. Avian flu has also been on the minds of public health officials, said Butt. Though the CDC continues to monitor confirmed human cases, reporting frequency has declined to once monthly, and the responsibility for detection in animals has been transferred to the US Department of Agriculture. 'We've seen an increase in physical cases, mostly in birds, but there's a potential to jump from birds to humans and cause outbreaks,' he said. Pawa and her coauthor wrote that they expected to see rising rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis, which has long been considered a pandemic of the 'poor.' Similar increases (especially local outbreaks) in hepatitis B and imported Oropouche are also anticipated. Widespread Misinformation The surge in health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic was largely attributed to social media and conservative news sources such as Fox News . In addition, US government officials during the first Trump administration sought to tamper with data sharing that other countries had long relied on. Fears about health misinformation have returned, according to the coauthors, who pointed to current deliberate efforts by Trump's cabinet to promote misinformation and publicly discredit national health institutions. 'People living in Canada are vulnerable to a cross-border bleed of not only microorganisms, but also of attitudes, health misinformation, and exposure to biased US media,' they wrote. 'In addition to the loss of data, the changes at the US Department of Health and Human Services, especially with regard to Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Make America Healthy Again, green light a lot of dis- and misinformation and falsehoods about health in general,' said Amy Kaler, PhD, professor of sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Kaler's expertise is the confluence of infectious diseases and social determinants of health. Amy Kaler, PhD 'It doesn't stop at the US-Canada border,' said Kaler, explaining that local media capacity has been dwindling, while platforms like Facebook have banned Canadian news sources. 'The availability of local, reliable, journalistically sound information has declined at the same time exposure to stuff ranging from outright crazy to just plain misinformed coming from the US has increased,' said Kaler. Though research has shown that Canadians trust their healthcare providers, Kaler also pointed out that many Canadians don't have access to primary care (a recent survey showed that more than 1 in 5 adults lacked a primary care physician). 'That gap gets filled by social media nonsense,' she said. Dwindling media sources are only one part of the problem. Kaler teaches in Alberta, which has a far-right government that 'imitates some of the worst of what's happening in the US, in terms of health and infectious diseases.' 'The big problem that I see is their willingness to entertain or give more respect than should be given to the extreme voices that say things like, 'Don't get vaccinated because your DNA will mutate,'' said Kaler. 'While our minister of health has said that people should get vaccinated, it's couched in rhetoric like 'This is a personal and private decision, and every family should weigh the risks and benefits of vaccination,'' explained Kaler. 'It's not vaccine denialism; it's a soft way of encouraging hesitancy.' Strengthening National Capacity Public health experts have long called for a stronger national infrastructure that supports interoperable systems that easily share health data between provinces, territories, and the federal government. Factors that affect equity (eg, socioeconomics or demographics) should also be considered, said Pawa. This type of robust, evolving surveillance system is needed to support domestic public healthcare efforts. 'They're something that we've needed to do anyway, but being focused and pushing it forward now is really important,' she said. At the same time, 'there needs to be a higher accountability for dedicated public health services, a mechanism that requires provinces and territories to pay attention to this, as distinct from other services that they are currently providing,' said Gaynor Watson-Creed, MD, preventive medicine specialist, physician, and associate dean of medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Gaynor Watson-Creed, MD Watson-Creed, a former deputy chief medical officer of health at the Nova Scotia Health Authority, Halifax, recalled that during the first severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, public health officials believed that they could create a 'CDC North' that would provide data and surveillance to the world just as CDC had done. 'Now that we're seeing the decline of the collaboration between CDC and its international partners, including Canada, that need is real. And it's not just the need for communicable disease surveillance but a new need for chronic disease surveillance, injury surveillance, and well-being surveillance in this country,' said Watson-Creed. 'We called for federal public health legislation [in 2017] similar to the way that we have federal legislation for acute care services (ie, the Canada Health Act), she added, citing a decline in Canada's public health systems. 'The trouble is that the provincial governments, ministers of health, etc., may not know enough about public health to even know what they don't know.' Clinicians must step up to the plate, said Watson-Creed. 'Clinicians have not stopped long enough to consider what's at the end of the spectrum after primary prevention. Now would be a good time for them to lend their voices to continued efforts to strengthen the primordial prevention end of public health,' which targets the root causes of disease. No funding for the editorial was reported. Pawa, Butt, and Kaler reported having no relevant financial relationships. Watson-Creed provides consultation services through her company, Sweetfire Consulting.
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Poorest parts of England to get £2.2bn more for NHS to cut care inequalities
England's poorest areas will get billions in extra health funding under new government plans to tackle stark inequalities in access to care and health outcomes. NHS services in deprived and coastal places will receive a £2.2bn boost this year to pay for more staff and equipment to help them close the wide gap in resources between them and well-off areas. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, will announce the move on Wednesday and hail it as a significant step towards ensuring that all patients get the same standard of care wherever they live. In a speech in Blackpool, he will decry that areas with the highest levels of illness and need for care often have low numbers of GPs, the longest waits for treatment and the poorest performing NHS services, a longstanding phenomenon known as 'the inverse care law'. He will portray the £2.2bn extra this year as a downpayment on a major redistribution of NHS funding, which is intended to improve the NHS in deprived areas. 'The truth is, those in greatest need often receive the worst quality healthcare. 'It flies in the face of the values the NHS was founded on. The circumstances of your birth shouldn't determine your worth,' he is expected to say. The £2.2bn is money that was due to be handed to England's 215 health trusts for 'deficit reduction' – to cover budget overspends – but has been freed up because Sir Jim Mackey, NHS England's chief executive, has told them to balance their books. Streeting has ordered a review of the Carr-Hill formula, which is used to decide the allocation of GP funding. The review, involving the advisory committee on resource allocation, will examine ways of ensuring that places with more illness get more money. The Nuffield Trust said the formula is 'inequitable', 'deeply flawed' and does not take account of levels of deprivation in areas covered by GP practices. The review will be the fourth such exercise since the formula came into use in 2004, without major changes resulting, it pointed out. Dr Becks Fisher, a GP and director of research and policy at the Nuffield Trust thinktank, also cautioned that while 'the government plans to pay for these changes by making savings in other parts of the NHS, there is no guarantee this will be successful.' Louise Gittins, the chair of the Local Government Association, said: 'Health inequalities are estimated to cost the NHS an extra £4.8bn a year, society around £31bn in lost productivity, and between £20bn and £32bn a year in lost tax revenue and benefit payments. Health is therefore a major determinant of economic performance and prosperity.' Prof Kate Pickett, an expert in health inequalities at York University and academic director of Health Equity North, said that recent years had brought 'worse health and more inequalities and a bigger north-south divide. 'We have repeatedly called for government to target spending to the places that are most in need. So Wes Streeting's drive to increase health spending in the most deprived places is very welcome.' But, she added, ministers should also cancel planned cuts to welfare benefits and start a public discussion about the merits of a basic income to improve population health in poor areas.
