CNS: November 2025

According to the latest WHO Global TB Report 2025 released a week ago, tobacco smoking is among the top-5 risk factors for the deadliest of all infectious diseases worldwide - tuberculosis (TB). In countries with alarmingly high tobacco use, like Indonesia, tobacco use is the biggest risk factor for TB. Tobacco is also among the major common risk factors for a range of other non-infectious (or non-communicable) diseases, such as heart diseases and stroke, cancers, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, among others.

Right to health is a fundamental human right. There is no doubt that everyone - without any exception or exclusion - should be able to live healthily in a rights-based manner - everywhere. Along with ensuring high to health is a reality for all, it is also important to recognise health financing as a smart investment.

The risk of getting TB disease is among the highest in unhoused and other marginalised persons but the likelihood of them seeking public TB services is low – and finishing lifesaving TB therapy is even lower. The delay is long – very long – for them to get right diagnosis (if at all) – and so are the catastrophic costs which they may incur until getting correctly diagnosed. Not being able to finish lifesaving TB treatment is not helping either- the person suffers and so does the TB response - because we collectively fail to disrupt TB transmission.

Let us go back in time 97 years ago and dare to imagine the plight of those who suffered with bacterial infections before the discovery of world's first antibiotic in 1928 (penicillin). Without lifesaving medicines, curable or treatable infections could become deadly - once again. Today, a lot of medicines are failing to treat infections because disease-causing bacteria, virus, fungi and/or parasites are becoming drug-resistant - largely because of human-made misuse and overuse of medicines. Choice is ours: Do we want to slip back in time when there were not enough medicines around, or would we stop misuse and overuse of medicines and use them responsibly?

[watch the recording] As intergovernmental Treaty meetings open on climate (UNFCCC) and tobacco control (WHO FCTC), there is a growing call to make Big Tobacco pay and kick Big Polluters out of these Treaty negotiations. Experts have underpinned the critical importance of firewalling intergovernmental health and climate policy negotiations from corporate interference and called for advancing progress towards holding abusive corporations to account.

1st inaugural India AMR Media Awards 2025

Watch the recording of 1st inaugural India AMR Media Awards 2025

Watch the recording of 1st inaugural India AMR Media Awards 2025, which was part of 5th Annual Global Media Forum on Antimicrobial Resistance, organised ahead of World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW 2025).

Watch the recording of 2nd Global AMR Media Awards Ceremony 2025

2nd Global AMR Media Awards Ceremony 2025 was held as part of 5th Annual Global Media Forum on Antimicrobial Resistance, ahead of World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW 2025).

Gateway to universal access to SRHR is human right to health

[watch the recording] The human right to health is not a privilege, it is a legal obligation - rooted in international human rights law - and must form the foundation of all efforts toward universal access, equity, and justice. Protecting, implementing, and enforcing this right is essential for the wellbeing of women, girls, and all gender-diverse peoples.

Watch the recording of SHE & Rights Media Awards Ceremony at International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2025) in Bogota, Colombia

A brewing crisis: Millions of women still lack access to family planning

The landscape of sexual and reproductive health and rights is shifting: millions of women want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern method of contraception.