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Despite years of warnings, much of the world was unprepared for the covid-19 pandemic. Shortages, confusion and delays cost many lives. Rich nations served themselves first with vaccines, while the poor waited in line. Now, an international effort to redress some of these shortcomings with a new agreement faces a deadline when the 194-member World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, meets next month in Geneva. (4/11)

In India, where health care walks hand in hand with superstition, myths and luck, Mr. Balakrishnappa helps patients sift through good and bad information — a matter of life and death both inside a critical care ward and after patients are discharged. (Vidya Krishnan, 4/12)

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information, and I want all men to benefit from the medical research to which I’ve devoted my career and that is now guiding my care. (Former NIH Director Francis Collins, 4/12)

In a world without partisan politics, the Cass report on youth gender medicine would prompt serious reflection from American trans-rights activists, their supporters in the media, and the doctors and institutions offering hormonal and surgical treatments to minors. At the request of the English National Health Service, the senior pediatrician Hilary Cass has completed the most thorough consideration yet of this field, and her report calmly and carefully demolishes many common activist tropes. (Helen Lewis, 4/12)

Powerful groups of mostly men are making major decisions about biology and bodies they know little about. Embryos in deep freeze that may never be used are just the latest example. As a professor of biomedical design for the past 20 years, I have seen this trend increase in a seemingly exponential way since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion. And women continue to suffer from suboptimal medical care because of procedures and devices that were flawed from the start. (Catherine M. Klapperich, 4/12)

If a preventable error that might cause harm occurs during medical care, should there be transparency, or should the incident be swept under the rug? A rule proposed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) leans toward the latter. (Pam Kohl and Bill Kiser, 4/12)