#medical progress

🤱🩺🩹 Botswana was named the first high-HIV country to end mother-to-child HIV transmission earlier this year! The achievement is a remarkable shift from the start of the century, when one in eight infants were infected at birth and transmission either through pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding ranged between 20 and 40% – a situation so severe the country’s then-president declared the nation in danger of “extinction.” However, through sustained political campaigns in investing in scientific infrastructure, testing and antiretroviral treatments, and public health education programs, mother-to-child transmission rates now lie below 1%, effectively eliminating the public health threat!

Over the years there’s been a lot of speculation about what causes fibromyalgia – everything from gluten and genetics to childhood trauma, spinal fractures and a weakened immune system.

About 5 million Americans suffer from fibromyalgia, a poorly understood disorder characterized by deep tissue pain, fatigue, mood swings and insomnia. It often takes years for a patient to be diagnosed and treatments are often ineffective – in part because of uncertainty about what actually causes fibromyalgia.

For the first time, researchers at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal have found an association between gut bacteria and fibromyalgia. It’s not clear whether the microbes cause fibromyalgia or if they are a symptom, but the discovery opens to door to new forms of treatment and diagnosis.

"We found that fibromyalgia and the symptoms of fibromyalgia - pain, fatigue and cognitive difficulties - contribute more than any of the other factors to the variations we see in the microbiomes of those with the disease,” said lead author Amir Minerbi, MD, of the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit at McGill University Health Centre.

“We also saw that the severity of a patient's symptoms was directly correlated with an increased presence or a more pronounced absence of certain bacteria - something which has never been reported before."

Minerbi and his colleagues enrolled 156 women in their study – about half of whom suffer from fibromyalgia. Participants were interviewed and gave stool, blood, saliva and urine samples, which were then compared.

Researchers found that the two groups had strikingly different types and amounts of gut bacteria. Nineteen different species of bacteria were found in either greater or lesser quantities in the microbiomes of fibromyalgia patients than in the healthy control group.

For example, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, one of the most abundant and well-studied bacteria in the human gut, was found to be depleted in fibromyalgia patients. It is believed to block pain and inflammation in the intestines.

Other bacteria associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and interstitial cystitis (IC) were found to be abundant in the fibromyalgia patients, but not in the healthy control group.

The bacterial differences don’t appear to be related to different diets or lifestyles, since some of the healthy participants lived in the same house as the fibromyalgia patients or were their parents, offspring or siblings. (Read more at link)

(All links included below!)

🍽️🥣🌎 Global hunger falls for the third consecutive year

Global hunger has declined for the third consecutive year, declining to 7.8% of the world’s population in 2025. This is down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022 — nearly 14 million fewer people and 43 million fewer respectively! Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean have seen the largest gains against hunger and malnutrition in recent years!

♻️🔋⚡️ A new 3D-printed battery breakthrough could be a huge renewable energy milestone

Renewable energy has historically had issues regarding storing it, with most methods being expensive and using materials that are difficult to come by. However, scientists have developed a new 3D-printed battery based on more-easily sourced materials that allows renewable energy to be stored even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing! These batteries, known as flow batteries, could be the key to scaling up renewable energy!

🤖⚡️🚫 New York becomes the first U.S. state to impose an AI data center ban

A new statewide executive order temporarily pauses the construction of new large data centers for up to a year. Data centers house thousands of computer servers that require massive amounts of energy and water to operate — the executive order, however, will allow the state to create rules for environmental protection, energy demand, water usage, and numerous other concerns that local communities have raised!

🩺💪👁️ El Salvador eliminates the world’s leading cause of blindness as a public health problem

Between 2023 to 2026, El Salvador found no evidence of active transmission or advanced cases of trachoma, a contagious eye disease. As the first country in Central America and the second in the Americas to reach this milestone (and in just three years!), this achievement came from improvements in health care, clean water, sanitation, and hygiene access!

🏠🔨❤️‍🩹 Thousands of families in Myanmar rebuild homes and safety after 2025 earthquake

The country’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake in 2025 left many families not only without a home but with emotional uncertainty — though some houses may have physically survived the earthquake, many families no longer felt safe, often fearful of the next aftershock or tremor. A joint initiative between South Korea and the UNDP, however, is helping more than 5,600 families rebuild or upgrade their homes to better withstand future disasters! With each home being constructed with safer, more resilient approaches, each family works alongside engineers to shape their houses to recover and reclaim their sense of home and safety — from the layout to the materials to even where shade should fall.

Did November fly by for anyone else? I guess FALL good things have to come to an end… 😉 (A good pun never hurt anybody!) Let’s wrap up last month (and my puns) with five good news stories from November! 🍂☕️

1. 🏳️‍🌈 A historic court win in the Dominican Republic struck down an old anti-gay law! The court ruled that the law, which criminalized consensual same-sex conduct by officers in the country’s police and armed forces, was “not in accordance with the constitution,” and ordered the removal of the penalties! The ruling has been celebrated as a step forward for LGBTQ people in the Dominican Republic to live freely without fear of discrimination and state-sanctioned punishment.

2. 🥜 Peanut allergies in children are declining rapidly in the U.S.! Originally, medical advice recommended delaying introducing children to allergenic foods like peanuts — however, after trials revealed that early exposure led to lower risks of developing allergies, medical guidelines were revised, leading to a sharp drop in diagnoses. Researchers estimate the shift has prevented around 40,000 peanut allergies and about 60,000 total food allergies since 2015!

3. 🎨 Volunteers are cleaning trash from a river in Johannesburg, South Africa — and artists are turning it into artwork! A group of local artists, known as the Alexandra River Collective, take waste pulled from the Jukskei River — tires, bricks, and other debris – and use it to create art resembling animals found in the river’s ecosystem. As part of a larger river cleaning and flood resilience project, SUNCASA, volunteers and artists are working together to make the area beautiful in more ways than one!

4. 🏜️ Five Native tribes are uniting to protect a sacred cultural landscape in California! Spanning more than 600,000 acres in the California desert, tribal members have come together to form an intertribal commission to co-manage the Chuckwalla National Monument, one of the U.S.’s newest protected public lands. In light of recent federal threats to public lands, the commission represents an advocate for the local environment, the conservation of Native history and culture, and a historic step towards tribal sovereignty!

5. 💉 Angola has launched a historic HPV vaccination effort, the first-ever of its kind in the country! Mobilizing across urban and rural areas and combating misinformation, the two-phase campaign seeks to vaccinate 2.2 million girls across the country, starting with 1.3 million in the first phase. As the efforts of 16 years of preparation and collaboration, the campaign has seen "unprecedented" results, bringing the country closer to preventing cervical cancer for future generations!

👩‍🍼🍼❤️‍🩹 Global maternal mortality rates have declined by almost 60% over 40 years! Rates temporarily reversed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have since resumed falling. That means there are about 365,000 fewer maternal deaths each year than in 1985 — if we continue to close the maternal health equity gaps across the globe, an additional 275,000 mothers could be saved annually.

🦠🩺🧪 A scientific breakthrough for HIV is hinting towards progress in longer-lasting treatments and, potentially, a cure! A study found that, when given immune system-boosting therapies, most of its participants maintained low virus levels for several months to even more than a year without their usual medication! Through coordinated “immune-boosting” strategies rather than a single “silver bullet,” researchers say the study, along with other current research, is a huge step in understanding how to fight HIV, offering hope for achieving lasting remission!

💪🩺❤️‍🩹 Burundi and Senegal have just eliminated trachoma as a public health issue! Trachoma, a bacterial infection and the leading preventable cause of blindness worldwide, was combatted through various strategies -- surgery treatments for late stages, antibiotics, facial cleanliness campaigns, and improvements in water and sanitation access. Both countries have joined a growing list of nations that have eliminated the neglected tropical disease (NTD), becoming the eighth and ninth countries in the WHO’s African Region to do so!

💉💪 Malaria elimination progress has prevented more than 2 billion cases and 13 million deaths since 2000! WHO has certified 45 countries and 1 territory as malaria-free to date, with 25 malaria-endemic countries reporting fewer than 10 cases in 2023. Years of global collaboration, vaccine programs, and developing tools like insecticide-treated nets have played vital roles in these gains.