分类： health

Following intense public and patient advocacy that gathered tens of thousands of signatures, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has reversed its plan to fully pull the monthly 3.6mg dose of lifesaving drug Zoladex from the Australian market, announcing Friday it will provide the hormone-suppressing treatment free of charge to eligible patients starting November 2026.

Zoladex, generic name goserelin, is a core treatment for multiple serious conditions: it lowers sex hormone levels to slow the growth of prostate cancer in men, and treats breast cancer and severe endometriosis in women. The 3.6mg monthly implant, which delivers a steady dose of the drug via a small pellet injected under the skin, was previously listed on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), the federal government’s subsidized drug program that makes critical medications affordable for patients.

In a statement explaining the original planned withdrawal, AstraZeneca noted that the current pricing structure of the PBS made continued supply of the 3.6mg dose through the scheme financially unsustainable, as the subsidized price offered by the program was too low to support ongoing production and distribution. The company had initially scheduled the dose to be removed from both the PBS and the private Australian market entirely this November, a decision that sparked immediate and widespread outrage from patients, clinicians and cancer advocacy groups.

Patients launched a public Change.org petition demanding AstraZeneca reverse its withdrawal and create a clear transition plan for people relying on the drug for ongoing care. The petition quickly went viral, racking up more than 40,000 signatures and more than 20,000 shares across social media. “No one should find out through the news that a medication forming part of their treatment plan may be taken away,” the petition read. “No patient should be left wondering whether their care will be interrupted. No doctor should be forced into rushed treatment changes because of a corporate decision.”

The pressure campaign pushed AstraZeneca to revise its plan. Under the new continuity program, patients who do not have a suitable alternative treatment pathway will still be able to access the 3.6mg monthly implant for free starting November 2026. While the reversal has been welcomed by patients, key cancer advocacy groups and clinical leaders warn the arrangement is not a permanent or sustainable solution.

Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA), one of the country’s leading patient advocacy organizations, issued a statement noting that critical questions around long-term access, administrative practicality and long-term cost stability remain unanswered, creating ongoing uncertainty for thousands of vulnerable patients. “While this update offers some guidance on how eligible patients might continue accessing the monthly option once it is off the PBS, it isn’t a long-term fix,” the group said.

Currently, a higher 10.8mg dose of Zoladex, which only needs to be administered once every three months, is available on the private market, but it is not covered by PBS subsidies. Following the public backlash over the 3.6mg withdrawal, AstraZeneca has submitted an application to add the higher 10.8mg dose to the PBS scheme. Even so, clinical leaders argue that the entire situation highlights the risk of allowing global corporate commercial decisions to undermine evidence-based best practice care for Australian patients.

Jenny Gilchrist, an experienced breast oncology nurse, praised the unified advocacy efforts of clinicians and BCNA that pressured AstraZeneca to revise its plan, but emphasized the changes remain unacceptable for patients. “After the announcement that Zoladex 3.6mg was being withdrawn from the market, clinicians and Breast Cancer Network Australia stood together, moved quickly and spoke with one clear united voice. This is unacceptable,” Gilchrist said. “Global commercial decisions must not be allowed to undermine best practice care here in Australia.”

Australia is on the cusp of a transformative shift in Alzheimer’s disease care, with the launch of a pioneering new blood test that can detect early signs of the condition up to two decades before patients begin showing noticeable symptoms. Developed as part of a new collaborative initiative between Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and Roche Diagnostics Australia, the test will anchor the newly launched Asia-Pacific Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis in Sydney, formally opened by Federal Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler.

For decades, one of the most intractable barriers to effective Alzheimer’s care has been delayed or uncertain diagnosis. Current gold-standard confirmation methods—PET brain scans and lumbar punctures to collect cerebrospinal fluid—are costly, invasive, and largely inaccessible outside major metropolitan centers. Many patients wait years for a definitive diagnosis, by which time disease-modifying treatments that work only in early stages are no longer effective. The new blood-based test upends this status quo: it delivers results in as little as 18 minutes, matches the accuracy of traditional testing methods, and can identify Alzheimer’s-related protein changes decades before cognitive symptoms emerge.

Associate Professor Emma Devenney, a leading researcher on the project, explained that the test targets key biomarkers linked to Alzheimer’s pathology: pTau181, pTau217, and the ApoE4 genetic risk marker. “These blood-based biomarkers let us confirm the presence of the proteins that cause Alzheimer’s far earlier than current diagnostic pathways,” Devenney noted in an interview with NewsWire. “That early certainty is life-changing for patients. Right now, the average time from a patient first noticing symptoms to getting a dementia diagnosis is around three years—for some, it’s even longer. By that point, many can’t access the treatments that slow progression, which only work in early-stage disease.”

The experience of Nell Hawe, a Port Macquarie grandmother living with young-onset Alzheimer’s, underscores the harm of diagnostic delay. Hawe first developed symptoms at age 48, but it took four years for her to receive a diagnosis, after doctors repeatedly dismissed her early cognitive changes as stress and menopause-related changes. “I could have started treatment years earlier, which might have slowed how quickly the disease progressed,” Hawe said. She is part of the *Think Again* public awareness campaign run by news.com.au and *The Australian*, and emphasized that early, accessible diagnosis would transform outcomes for thousands of Australian families. “The waiting for a diagnosis is the most frustrating part for so many people. A simple blood test that gives answers quickly is just amazing,” she added.

Roche’s test has already secured a spot on Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration registry, marking one of the first approved Alzheimer’s blood tests in the country. For the immediate future, the test will be used primarily to confirm Alzheimer’s pathology for clinical trials run out of the new Sydney centre, but leaders of the project expect broader access for clinical use to become available over the coming months. The centre will also serve as an Asia-Pacific hub for dementia diagnostics research, working alongside partners Eli Lilly Australia to streamline diagnostic and treatment pathways, evaluate new biomarkers, and speed up the translation of emerging research into patient care.

The launch comes as Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region face an escalating dementia public health crisis. Dementia is already the leading cause of death in Australia, where more than 446,500 people currently live with the condition. Projections indicate that number will surpass 1 million by 2065, with the annual economic cost already exceeding $15.8 billion (corrected from the original $4.7 billion that referenced partial costs) and growing pressure on household caregivers and the public health system. Alzheimer’s accounts for 60 to 70 per cent of all dementia cases globally, yet an estimated 75 per cent of people living with the disease remain undiagnosed. For the Asia-Pacific region, which is home to 20 per cent of the global population, the burden is set to grow even faster: the region is expected to account for more than half of the world’s dementia cases by 2050.

Long-term, the project’s leadership aims to secure Medicare coverage for the blood test, making it widely accessible to patients across regional and metropolitan Australia. For now, patients concerned about cognitive decline are advised to first consult their general practitioner, who can refer them to a specialist for testing once the centre is fully operational. Experts say the breakthrough lays the groundwork for a future shift from late-stage Alzheimer’s care to preventive intervention, a long-sought goal that could drastically reduce the global burden of the disease.

Along the banks of Seoul’s iconic Han River, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence surveillance system is transforming suicide prevention efforts, turning the capital’s most famous landmark into a place where countless at-risk lives are saved every year. But even as the technology delivers staggering results, South Korea continues to grapple with one of the world’s deadliest national suicide crises, a public health emergency that leaders have labeled a global shame.

Since its full deployment in 2021, the AI-powered camera network installed across 17 Han River bridges has redefined how first responders intervene to stop suicide attempts. The system is trained to flag high-risk behavior: it automatically alerts emergency services when a person lingers in restricted jumping zones, enters marked unsafe areas, or picks up one of the bridges’ dedicated suicide prevention hotline phones. For Kim Jun-young, head of the Hangang Bridge CCTV Integrated Control Center, the results have exceeded all expectations. The overall rescue rate for potential suicide attempts along the river has jumped from just 56% in 2012 to over 99% today, a staggering improvement that has saved hundreds of lives.

Thanks to the system’s early alerts, emergency response teams can reach almost any bridge along the Han within five minutes – the narrow, critical window that makes all the difference between life and death. “We see our role as giving them one more chance to think it over, because it may not be the decision you want,” Kim told Agence France-Presse in an interview. Jumping from the 30-meter-high bridges results in an impact with the water equivalent to a car crashing at 60 kilometers per hour, Kim explained, leaving almost no chance of survival even for strong swimmers.

Intervention is rarely straightforward: many people determined to end their lives fight off rescuers or flee at a sprint, while others make a split-second final decision to jump the moment they hear approaching sirens. Still, the numbers tell a clear success story. In 2023 alone, the network of nearly 900 cameras detected more than 1,200 potential suicide incidents across 17 bridges, and just eight people lost their lives.

For all the local success of the AI system, South Korea as a whole is facing a worsening national suicide crisis that President Lee Jae Myung has called “a disgrace on the world stage.” Official 2024 government data puts the national suicide rate at more than 29 deaths per 100,000 people, the highest level recorded since 2011. Suicide is currently the leading cause of death for South Koreans between the ages of 10 and 49, a statistic that underscores the depth of the public health challenge.

Mental health experts point to deep-rooted societal factors driving the crisis. Relentless academic competition, punishingly long work hours, and a cultural narrative that frames personal hardship as an individual failure leave many people struggling to cope with setbacks or reach out for professional help, explained Yoo Jae-hyun, director of suicide prevention at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital. “Many who have tried to end their lives told me they feel they have become a burden to those around them, and that everyone else would be better off if they were gone,” Yoo said. Data from his hospital shows that people in their 20s make up the largest share of emergency room admissions for suicide attempts, highlighting how the crisis disproportionately impacts young South Koreans.

For 33-year-old cartoonist Hwang, who goes by the professional name Smiling Stone, the AI system’s work is personal. She was pulled from the Han River alive by first responders years after her father died by suicide in 2014, leaving her to inherit his crippling debt, years of lawsuits, and the seizure of her assets – a sequence of events that left her unable to open a personal bank account. Throughout her 20s, she worked multiple backbreaking cash jobs to make ends meet, and at her lowest point, suicide felt like anything but an impulsive choice. “It didn’t feel like a particularly tragic choice. It felt like a rational one,” Hwang recalled. Today, she lives a resilient life, and says learning to be accepted for who she is has helped her heal. She chronicles her experience as a survivor of suicide loss in her cartoon memoir *I Am a Suicide Loss Survivor*, recounting small, lingering regrets like the time her father visited her at the cafe where she worked shortly before his death, brought her a gift, and left before she could buy him a cup of coffee. For months after his death, she returned every day to leave a coffee on the small table he never got to sit at: “One he could never drink again, and one I could never brew for him again.”

AI-powered suicide prevention surveillance is not unique to South Korea. Around the world, cities and public institutions are turning to the technology to detect high-risk behavior early. Japanese tech firm Asilla has developed an AI system that flags unusual behavior such as falls or people lingering in elevated high-risk zones where people often attempt suicide. The system has been trained on behavioral data from cameras in public spaces including shopping centers and train stations, and has already successfully helped guards intervene in two separate rooftop suicide attempts, said Yuka Suzuki, the company’s chief product officer. Even so, Suzuki stressed that AI is a tool, not a solution: it cannot replace human mental health support, and cannot reverse Japan’s status as the G7 nation with the highest suicide rate on its own. “It’s still often difficult to provide proper mental health support,” Suzuki said. “But it is significant if we can reduce the number of incidents, even by a little, where people lose their lives in the blink of an eye.”

Back in Seoul, Kim Jun-young acknowledges that the system is not perfect, recalling one tragic case where a young man was intercepted by rescuers after an initial attempt, only to return hours later and jump while smoking with a friend. Even with rescue boats already on the water, teams could not reach him in time. For the teams that monitor the cameras and respond to alerts, however, every life saved is a victory – and every extra minute the system buys for an at-risk person is a second chance that they would never have had before.

As the 26th International AIDS Conference opens in Rio de Janeiro, global public health leaders are sounding an urgent alarm: decades of progress in the fight against HIV are now at serious risk, driven by a dramatic, unprecedented collapse in international donor funding that began after the Trump administration returned to power in the U.S. and was followed by sweeping cuts from major European nations.

Beatrice Grinsztejn, president of the International AIDS Society, opened the gathering by highlighting the severity of the crisis, noting that donor funding has never contracted as far or as quickly as it did in 2025, with the world’s most vulnerable communities already bearing the cost of these cuts. “This conference comes at a moment of real danger for the global battle against HIV,” Grinsztejn said.

The paradox at the heart of the current crisis is hard to overstate: scientific advances have never been more promising, turning what was once a universally fatal diagnosis into a manageable chronic condition for millions of people around the world. UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima emphasized that ending AIDS as a public health threat is no longer held back by a lack of scientific progress — researchers have already delivered the tools needed to turn the tide. Instead, the barrier is political failure and deep systemic inequality.

“We are living through one of the most exciting moments in the history of HIV science,” Byanyima explained, pointing to new prevention medications that offer effectiveness on par with many vaccines. But even with these game-changing tools available, millions of people at risk still cannot access them. “When prevention disappears, infections rise. When treatment is interrupted, people die. We know exactly how this story ends if we fail to act now,” she warned.

New data released by UNAIDS at the conference lays bare the scale of the funding collapse. In 2025 alone, international HIV financing directed to developing nations dropped by 18%. Since 2011, total HIV funding from European donor countries has plummeted by 58%, a decline that has shifted the bulk of the global funding burden to the United States. Even with the Trump administration’s deep cuts last year, the U.S. still accounts for 74% of all donor government funding for HIV programs worldwide.

Against this backdrop of shrinking international support, low- and middle-income countries hardest hit by HIV — most of them in sub-Saharan Africa — have stepped up their own domestic investments. Domestic funding for HIV responses rose by 4% in 2025, and now makes up nearly 60% of total global spending on HIV. But Byanyima cautioned that this increase still amounts to “a drop in the ocean” compared to the total resources needed to meet global targets. For many low-income African nations, up to 90% of their HIV response still relies on international aid, leaving them extremely vulnerable to donor cuts.

Experts note that the full impact of the 2025 funding cuts will not be visible for some time, but early warning signs are already emerging. While global new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths dropped to their lowest levels in over 30 years in 2025, new infections have already started rising in 21 countries. The world remains far off track from meeting its 2030 goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat: the report found that nearly half of all children living with HIV still do not have access to life-saving antiretroviral treatment, falling short of the target to reach 20 million people on treatment.

The conference is also shining a light on ongoing efforts to expand access to breakthrough new HIV medications, with public health advocates and global health bodies pushing major pharmaceutical companies to lower prices and expand generic manufacturing access. Ahead of the Rio conference, U.S. pharma giant Merck announced a landmark plan to permit generic manufacturers in Africa and India to produce cheaper versions of its once-monthly antiretroviral pill alimatravir, which is still awaiting final regulatory approval.

But activists are calling for more action from other drug makers. Last week, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) issued a public call to U.S. pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences to expand access to lenacapavir, a long-acting preventative HIV drug that has been hailed as a game-changer because it only requires two injections per year. MSF pointed out that several countries where lenacapavir clinical trials were conducted — including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Peru — are currently excluded from existing agreements that allow generic production of the drug. Independent research shows lenacapavir can be manufactured for just $40 per patient per year, but in the U.S., the drug costs up to $28,000 annually per patient, a price tag that puts it out of reach for nearly all low-income nations.

Across contemporary pop culture, from high-profile celebrity appearances to hit streaming series, cigarettes are experiencing a surprising rebranding as a trendy, cool aesthetic accessory — a shift that has left public health experts sounding urgent warnings about reversing decades of progress in tobacco control.

Recent high-profile moments have cemented this new normalized image: beauty billionaire Kylie Jenner appeared with a lit cigarette on the cover of *Vanity Fair*, while custom cigarette trays made an appearance at pop star Dua Lipa’s high-profile wedding. On social media, the trend is even more visible: fashion data tracker Style Analytics reports that searches for “smoking pose” on visual platform Pinterest have jumped 70% among users aged 18 to 24. Instagram’s popular “Cigfluencers” account curates photos of A-list celebrities smoking, with a tagline that reads “your favorite smoker’s favorite smokers,” and even shared candid shots of stars lighting up at this year’s May Met Gala in New York.

Remarkably, this growing aesthetic popularity has not yet translated to a measurable rise in actual smoking rates across the United States: adult smoking remains at a 60-year low, while youth smoking hit a 25-year trough in recent data. But that has done little to ease the fears of anti-tobacco advocates, who warn that normalizing and glamorizing the habit risks undoing generations of public health gains.

“Pop culture’s glamorization of smoking is just reigniting the addiction among young people and discouraging those trying to quit,” Jessica Rath, vice president of leading anti-tobacco advocacy group Truth Initiative, told Agence France-Presse.

The trend extends far beyond social media: Truth Initiative’s analysis found that eight of the 10 feature films nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture included depictions of tobacco use. Research consistently shows that exposure to on-screen smoking makes young people two to three times more likely to take up tobacco products themselves, Rath explained.

Brian King, head of U.S. programs at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called the growing aesthetic appeal of smoking “highly concerning from a public health perspective.”

Experts point to multiple cultural factors driving the resurgence of smoking’s cool reputation. One key driver is the ongoing revival of 1990s and early 2000s pop culture aesthetics — an era when smoking was far more socially accepted and widespread in the U.S. The trend is clearly visible in recent hit media: the popular streaming series *Love Story*, which chronicles the relationship of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, regularly depicts Bessette-Kennedy, a well-known cigarette smoker, engaging in the habit, fitting with the era’s aesthetic.

Beyond nostalgia, the smoking aesthetic has also been framed as a deliberate act of rebellion against the pervasive social media pressure for constant “self-optimization” and wellness culture, according to brand strategy newsletter *On Brand*. This rebellion plays out against a larger backdrop of widespread economic and geopolitical uncertainty, which has contributed to a growing mental health crisis among young people.

“Right now, we’re also having kind of a colliding mental health crisis with young people,” Rath said. “And so young people are thinking that using nicotine is helping their feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress — when really it could be making it worse.”

Another contributing factor, King noted, is that public focus on tobacco-related harms has largely shifted to newer nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches, which have exploded in popularity in recent years. As attention has turned to these emerging products, the well-documented risks of traditional cigarettes have faded from public conversation, and policy progress on limiting traditional tobacco use has stalled.

“In some cases, we as society have been recalcitrant in terms of remembering those risks, and also importantly implementing policies that we know work to prevent the use of these products,” King said.

Policy headwinds have compounded the issue: the Trump administration made deep cuts to federal smoking prevention and cessation support programs, while the Biden administration walked back a planned ban on menthol cigarettes, a product disproportionately popular with young smokers. Adding to the challenge, the U.S. tobacco industry spends roughly $1 million per hour on marketing and promotion of its products, far outstripping the resources available to anti-tobacco nonprofits. While there is no concrete data linking tobacco companies directly to the “cigfluencer” trend, King emphasized that the U.S. must prioritize efforts to “de-normalize smoking” to protect decades of progress.

Society must “not be doing anything that could potentially reverse the considerable progress that we’ve made in reducing smoking over many decades,” he said.

Alongside proven traditional tobacco control measures — including public education campaigns, expanded cessation support, tobacco tax increases, and public smoking bans — Rath called for new collaborations with social media platforms and Hollywood to curb the glamorization of smoking. She proposes adding on-screen public health messages directing viewers to cessation support services, similar to the resource links already included for content addressing suicide or sexual violence. Production studios also have the power to reduce unnecessary depictions of smoking and write realistic storylines about quitting, she noted, pointing to the hit series *The Bear*, which showed its main character using nicotine replacement therapy to quit smoking as a positive example.

As the aesthetic trend gains traction among young audiences, public health advocates stress that proactive action is critical to prevent a generational reversal in falling smoking rates.