Bulletin #109: Nuclear testing: countdown to a health catastrophe

People's Health Dispatch

07 Nov 2025 • 3 min read

This fortnight

Solidarity with Palestine in the health sector continues to grow, with grassroots groups around the world building campaigns to boycott Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva. These initiatives have focused on sharing information among patients and health workers about Teva’s complicity in apartheid and genocide. In Italy, several local boycott groups recently achieved key victories, pressuring municipalities to issue guidance to public pharmacies recommending alternatives to Teva products – a result that could signal the start of a broader wave of accountability.

In the United States, President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of a return to nuclear testing has triggered alarm among health workers and anti-war activists. Beyond the severe health hazards associated with nuclear testing itself, organizations like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War warn that such measures bring us closer to escalation toward nuclear conflict, from which there will be no return.

Today’s health and environmental crises are deeply tied to the structures of capitalism. In an interview with Outra Saúde, Latin American epidemiologist Jaime Breilh explores how universities and the sciences can play a key role not just in understanding these systemic links, but in breaking them too.

Meanwhile, the global health workforce continues to shoulder the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. New case studies from the People’s Health Movement reveal how patterns of health worker migration, driven by neoliberal policies, are changing, and can only be addressed through a radical shift in political and health system priorities.