Experts are urging guideline changes on what health professionals should wear to protect against flu-like illnesses including Covid

Surgical face masks provide inadequate protection against flu-like illnesses including Covid, and should be replaced by respirator-level masks – worn every time doctors and nurses are face to face with a patient, according to a group of experts urging changes to World Health Organization guidelines.

There is “no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using” the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their “inadequate protection against airborne pathogens”, they said in a letter to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The cost of medication was too high for thousands of CF sufferers around the world. Now a Bangladeshi company is making a generic version that will change lives

Seven-year-old Grant Leitch had an important question for his mother. He asked if his little brother, Brett, who has cystic fibrosis (CF), was going to die.

The South African family, like tens of thousands around the world, have been priced out of access to modern cystic fibrosis therapies, and if Grant had asked at the start of 2025, he might have received a less optimistic answer.