Reuters Health News Summary

Community delivery of medication of transport services, community health workers, all of these services are currently still impacted", Christine Stegling, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, told reporters in Geneva. US CDC sends health alert on Uganda's Ebola outbreak The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned doctors and other healthcare workers about an outbreak of Ebola cases in Uganda.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Mettler-Toledo forecasts upbeat 2025 profit on strong lab instrument demand

Medical equipment maker Mettler-Toledo International forecast annual profit above estimates on Thursday, banking on strong demand for its laboratory instruments used in drug development. The company had said in November that market conditions remain soft, especially in China, but added that it expects them to gradually improve throughout 2025.

Healthcare company Sanofi announces share buyback of up to 2 billion euros

French healthcare company Sanofi announced on Friday a share buyback plan worth up to 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion), which would be done between now and the end of December. ($1 = 0.9640 euros)

White House preparing order to cut thousands of federal health workers, WSJ reports

The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. White House on Thursday denied it is drafting an executive order to cut workers across federal health agencies.

Swiss biotech Bioversys' shares open slightly higher on stock market debut

Swiss biotech Bioversys AG shares started trading at 36.5 Swiss francs ($40.29) on the SIX Swiss Exchange on Friday, slightly up from the final price for its initial public offering (IPO) of 36 Swiss francs per share. BioVersys, which researches and develops novel antibacterial products for serious life-threatening infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, will use most of its proceeds from the IPO towards the development of its BV100 treatment for infections linked to ventilator-associated pneumonia and bloodstream infections.

Threat of disease in DRC "multiplied" by conflict, WHO says

Conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has "multiplied" the risk of the spread of diseases, including cholera, malaria, tuberculosis and the deadly mpox virus, the World Health Organization warned on Friday. Fighting between Rwandan-backed M23 rebels and Congolese armed forces has exacerbated an already "dire situation" for millions of people, Dr Boureima Hama Sambo, WHO representative for the DRC told reporters in Geneva via video link from the capital Kinshasa.

UNAIDS says U.S. aid freeze causing a 'lot of confusion'

U.S. funding cuts in foreign aid are causing a "lot of confusion" on the ground despite a waiver being placed on HIV/AIDS programs, UNAIDS said on Friday. "There is a lot of confusion especially on the community level. Community delivery of medication of transport services, community health workers, all of these services are currently still impacted", Christine Stegling, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, told reporters in Geneva.

US CDC sends health alert on Uganda's Ebola outbreak

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned doctors and other healthcare workers about an outbreak of Ebola cases in Uganda. The agency said although no cases have been reported in the U.S., it was issuing an advisory through its health alert network to raise awareness.

Halt in U.S. aid cripples global efforts to relieve hunger

The Trump administration’s effort to slash and reshape American foreign aid is crippling the intricate global system that aims to prevent and respond to famine. Struggling to manage hunger crises sweeping the developing world even before U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the international famine monitoring and relief system has suffered multiple blows from a sudden cessation of U.S. foreign aid.

Health Rounds: Vaccine keeps advanced kidney cancer from recurring

Patients with advanced kidney cancer who received an experimental vaccine after their tumors were removed were still cancer-free years later in a small early-stage trial, researchers reported in Nature. These were patients "where you know the risk of the cancer coming back is very high," said Dr. Toni Choueiri of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who helped lead the study. "And after a median follow up of almost four years, none of the nine vaccinated patients has experienced a recurrence from their kidney cancer."

Lilly reassures investors that weight-loss drug demand is strong, shares rise

Eli Lilly on Thursday suggested that demand for its popular diabetes and weight-loss treatments was not a concern, easing investor agitation about signs of weakness in sales of the drugs. Lilly said on a call with analysts that it still believed there was huge demand for its weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro from hundreds of millions of patients.