The Lancet MedZero: a single platform for carbon data across every product in healthcare

National University of Singapore, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

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The Lancet MedZero team photo

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Credit: NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

If healthcare was a country, it would be the fifth largest carbon emitter on the planet – between the European Union and the Russian Federation, with CO2 emissions in the sector higher than all of aviation and shipping combined.

Yet, until today, carbon data has been available for less than 1% of the products a clinician or a health system uses each day.

The Lancet MedZero is built to close that gap. Launching today at the 79th World Health Assembly, the platform (www.medzerocarbon.com) is the first to provide comprehensive carbon analytics across the full spectrum of healthcare, from pharmaceuticals and surgical instruments to chest X-rays and blood tests.

Convened by The Lancet and developed by an international academic consortium, it has been designed by clinicians, for clinicians, with over 14,000 entries at launch.

The platform is built to inform decisions at every level of the health system with the aim of helping hospitals and clinics save money, reduce waste, improve patient care, and tackle climate change. For example:[1]

• A health policymaker in the UK could identify that a simple switch from polluting incineration to recycling would avoid over 311,000 tonnes of CO2e (the equivalent to taking 212,000 British cars off the road), saving 76 million GBP each year as a result.
• A hospital CEO in Singapore, can see transitioning to reusable surgical gowns would reduce CO2e emissions by 4,407 tonnes (equivalent to the annual electricity use of 3,159 HDB households in Singapore), saving around 700,000 SGD annually.
• And national procurement experts across the world can compare logistics alternatives, saving over 3.85 million tonnes of CO2e by shifting to lower-carbon freight options for pharmaceuticals, such as shipping, globally (equivalent to nearly twice the national emissions of Malta).

The platform’s launch at the World Health Assembly brought together the Editor in Chief of The Lancet, the Minister of Health of the Philippines, the International Medical Secretary for Doctors Without Borders, the UK NHS’s Chief Sustainability Officer, and the Permanent Secretary of the Thailand Ministry of Public Health.

“The climate crisis is a health crisis. But climate action depends on credible data.” Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, said ahead of the launch, “The Lancet MedZero plans to create a shared global infrastructure of knowledge about the carbon footprint of health systems. Measurement is the foundation of accountability, and accountability is the motivation for action.”

 

 

The problem the Lancet MedZero solves

More than 100 countries, covering over half the world’s population, have now committed to tackling climate change through a WHO-led Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health.

Until now, that data has been fragmented and inaccessible. The Lancet MedZero was built to change that.

For their hospitals and health systems to turn those commitments into action, they need transparent and trustworthy data to make evidence-based decisions. A surgeon redesigning a care pathway, a pharmacist restocking a hospital supply, a procurement lead renegotiating supply contracts, and a health minister setting national strategy: all of them need product-level carbon data, quickly and reliably.

 

A global collaboration built for scale

The Lancet MedZero is a global collaboration of clinicians, engineers, data scientists, economists, and public health professionals working to support healthcare decarbonisation worldwide. Convened by The Lancet, it brings together expertise in healthcare delivery, carbon analytics, and system transformation, with contributors from across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. This diversity reflects a shared commitment to advancing sustainable healthcare across regions.

 

Academic partners: Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Thailand; National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan; National University of Singapore; Northeastern University, USA; University of Birmingham, UK; University of Melbourne, Australia

About The Lancet: The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals, published since 1823. It has a long-standing commitment to climate and health, including through the Lancet Countdown, the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare, and multiple commissions on planetary health, pollution, among others.

 

NUS Specific Quote
 

“Singapore’s health system is well-positioned to lead on sustainable healthcare in Asia. The Lancet MedZero gives us the data infrastructure to move from aspiration to action – making it possible for our hospitals and clinicians to make every procurement decision, every care pathway choice, with the climate in mind.”

Professor Nick Watts, Director, Centre for Sustainable Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)

How NUS contributes to the platform

 

The National University of Singapore (NUS), through its Centre for Sustainable Medicine (CoSM), is an academic partner of the Lancet MedZero and contributes to the platform in several concrete ways:
 

• Carbon analytics and life cycle data: CoSM researchers contribute primary life cycle assessment (LCA) data for medical products and healthcare services, quantifying the carbon impact of everything from how a product is manufactured to how it is used and disposed of in a clinical setting.
• Estimating carbon footprints at scale: CoSM also leads the development of the platform's models for the parts of a product's carbon footprint that are shared across many products - such as how it is shipped, used, and disposed of. This includes building practical methods to estimate the weight of tens of thousands of medical products (since weight drives much of the carbon cost of transport and waste). Together, these methods allow the platform to generate carbon estimates at a scale that would not be possible through manual data collection alone.
• Clinical translation and governance: CoSM provides clinical and technical oversight to ensure the platform’s decision-support tools are meaningful and actionable for frontline clinicians, hospital administrators, and policymakers in Singapore and globally.
   

How the Lancet MedZero benefits Singapore’s healthcare system

 

Singapore has committed to achieving net-zero emissions for its healthcare sector by 2050, in alignment with the Singapore Green Plan 2030, and has developed a baseline of its healthcare emissions as a foundation for action. The Lancet MedZero directly supports this ambition by giving Singapore’s health institutions access to verified, product-level carbon data that can inform:
 

• Public hospital procurement decisions – enabling MOH and cluster hospitals (NUHS, SingHealth, NHG Health) to choose lower-carbon products without compromising clinical quality or cost-effectiveness.
• National sustainability reporting – supporting the MOH in tracking and disclosing scope 3 healthcare emissions as part of Singapore’s international climate commitments.
• Clinical care pathway redesign – giving clinicians at public and private institutions access to evidence that supports lower-carbon, cost-saving alternatives in surgical, pharmaceutical, and diagnostic workflows.
   

As noted in the press release, a hospital CEO in Singapore can already use the platform to model, for example, how transitioning to reusable surgical gowns would reduce CO2e emissions by 4,407 tonnes and save approximately 700,000 SGD annually – equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of over 3,000 HDB households.

 

Next steps for Singapore

 

Following the platform’s launch at the 79th World Health Assembly, NUS will:
 

• Continue engaging with key institutional stakeholders and users including hospital leadership, MOH representatives, and the healthcare industry, to present the platform and identify priority use cases for local adoption.
• Pilot the platform with the clusters and healthcare institutions to validate the data in Singapore’s clinical and procurement context and generate locally relevant case studies.
• Engage academic and industry partners across Singapore to contribute data, expertise, and funding to sustain and grow the platform.

 

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[1] Carbon analytics, volume, and cost data drawn for each of the three examples from www.medzerocarbon.com and underlying data sources.

 

Bacterial STIs reach record highs in Europe, and congenital syphilis cases nearly double

Without decisive action, current trends are likely to continue, increasing negative health consequences

\European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

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In 2024 the number of recorded  gonorrhoea cases reached 106 331 across the European Union and European Economic Area - a 303% increase since 2015.

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Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

The latest Annual Epidemiological Reports from ECDC indicate a surge in bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs) across Europe. In 2024, notifications of gonorrhoea and syphilis, alongside congenital syphilis, reached their highest levels in over a decade, reflecting sustained transmission across multiple countries.

The data for 2024 show that gonorrhoea cases reached 106 331, representing a 303% increase since 2015. Syphilis cases more than doubled over the same period to 45 577 cases. Chlamydia remains the most frequently reported STI with 213 443 cases. Lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) also continued to see ongoing transmission, with 3 490 reported cases.

Sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise for 10 years and reached record high levels in 2024. Untreated, these infections can cause severe complications, such as chronic pain and infertility and, in the case of syphilis, problems with the heart or nervous system. Most distressingly, between 2023 and 2024, we have seen a near doubling of congenital syphilis, where infections pass directly to newborns, leading to potentially lifelong complications’, says Bruno Ciancio, Head of Unit, Directly Transmitted and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases. 'Protecting your sexual health remains straightforward. Use condoms with new or multiple partners, and get tested if you have symptoms, such as pain, discharge or an ulcer’.

Transmission trends vary significantly across different population groups. Men who have sex with men remain the most disproportionately affected group, with the steepest long‑term increases in gonorrhoea and syphilis. Among heterosexual populations, syphilis is rising, particularly among women of reproductive age, the consequences of which are a near doubling of congenital syphilis cases from 78 in 2023 to 140 in 2024 across 14 countries reporting data.

These figures align with findings from ECDC’s monitoring report on congenital syphilis, which highlights missed prevention opportunities, such as gaps in antenatal screening, lack of follow-up and repeat testing, and treatment. The monitoring report also identified broader hurdles to testing and prevention that require action. Thirteen of 29 reporting countries still charge out-of-pocket costs for basic STI tests. Uneven implementation of services and outdated national strategies limit the impact of proven interventions, as many national prevention strategies fail to account for post-pandemic behavioural changes. ECDC recommends that European countries improve antenatal screening protocols to ensure that syphilis is diagnosed and treated promptly and correctly according to the stage of infection, to prevent transmission to the foetus during pregnancy.

In addition, in January 2026, ECDC provided specific guidance on the use of doxycycline for post-exposure prophylaxis (doxy-PEP) to support STI prevention efforts. People facing higher exposure risks should consult their doctor or other healthcare provider about tailored prevention options. ECDC does not recommend widespread use of doxy-PEP for gonorrhoea due to high levels of antimicrobial resistance and the risk for further acceleration of resistance development.

Reversing increasing trends in STI cases requires accessible prevention services, easier access to testing, faster treatment, and stronger partner notification to stop onward transmission. ECDC urges public health authorities to urgently update national STI strategies and strengthen surveillance systems to better monitor the impact of prevention efforts. Without decisive action, current trends are likely to continue, increasing negative health consequences and widening inequalities in access to care.

Resources:
ECDC Annual Epidemiological Reports for 2024

Congenital syphilis: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/congenital-syphilis-annual-epidemiological-report-2024

Syphilis: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/syphilis-annual-epidemiological-report-2024

Gonorrhoea: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/gonorrhoea-annual-epidemiological-report-2024

Chlamydia: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/chlamydia-annual-epidemiological-report-2024 

Lymphogranuloma venereum:  https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/lymphogranuloma-venereum-annual-epidemiological-report-2024

Censorship Rocks Los Angeles School District–“Teachers Told to Remove Palestine & BLM Flags”

Marcy Winograd

 May 20, 2026

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Ron Gochez, Union del Barrio, addresses rally in support of Ethnic Studies teachers at LAUSD’s Downtown Business Magnet (5/14/26). Photo credit: Colin Hernandez.

Censorship Rocks Los Angeles School District–“Teachers Told to Remove Palestine & BLM Flags”

The second largest school district in the country has brought down the hammer on social justice educators following last year’s passage of AB 715, an “antisemitism” bill sponsored by the California Israel lobby and rubber-stamped by its minions in the state legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with over 500,000 students has ordered Ethnic Studies and social studies teachers at the Downtown Business Magnet (DBM) to remove Palestinian and Black Lives Matter flags, and undergo teacher training on the use of “neutral terms” to describe sensitive topics, including Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Gaza.

The order from the District’s Office of Student Civil Rights (OSCR) came after Emet Legal Services, contacted by another teacher at DBM, filed a complaint of antisemitism last February objecting to social studies and health teacher Tiffany Do’s display of a Palestinian flag and anti-genocide poster, as well as the wearing of a keffiyeh in class. In its 19-page “Report of Findings,” which Do said was not shared with DBM teachers, the District said the keffiyeh could stay but advocacy posters had to go.

Community rallies in solidarity with Do

At a lively after-school protest (5/16/26) in front of the Downtown Business Magnet, teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the District’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.

School psychologist Clemen Avalos also spoke at the rally sponsored by LA Educators for Justice in Palestine, Association of Raza Educators, Union del Barrio, Community Self-Defense Coalition and others. Avalos said, “Palestinian students, Mexican students, students born north or south of the border, Black students, Indigenous students–all of our students deserve the right to learn about the truth about their history, their identity and their culture.”

Ethnic Studies under attack

Avalos’ comments speak to AB 715’s threat to Ethnic Studies as an interdisciplinary study of decolonization that centers stories and struggles of marginalized voices and people of color. The California Department of Education’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) underscores solidarity with the oppressed as a foundational value of Ethnic Studies, a course originally required for high school graduation under 2021 legislation, but now stalled due to zero funding in the state budget. From the start, the Israel lobby–JPAC/Jewish California and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus (LJC) –has objected to the mere mention of Palestine in Ethnic Studies, introducing one bill after another to either restrict Ethnic Studies to domestic issues or otherwise police the discipline’s teachers with AB 715, authored by Assemblymember Rick Chavez-Zbur (D-Santa Monica).

DBM Ethnic Studies and health teacher Do (Tido) told teachers, students, parents and community members gathered in the blistering sunlight in front of the school, “AB 715 is an erasure of marginalized people. The order to remove a Palestinian flag during an active genocide is actually Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian.”

The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) is a non-profit of scholars and researchers that encourages victims of anti-Palestinian racism to report incidents to the organization for “education” and “advocacy.” IUAPR defines anti-Palestinian racism as a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” Its list of examples of such racism includes “failing to acknowledge Palestinians with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine”… “pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives” … and “defaming Palestinians and their [non-Palestinian] allies with slander such as being inherently anti-semitic.”

Back at the rally

Against a backdrop of teachers holding signs that read “Protect Ethnic Studies” and “Defend Palestinian Voices,” the animated Do addressed an estimated 40 people–including Colin Hernandez, Zbur’s challenger in the June 2nd primary.

“AB 715 weaponizes civil rights advocacy against the people it was meant to protect, so that just the mere existence of a Palestinian flag is now considered antisemitic, but the overreach of AB 715 does not stop with Palestinians,” said Do. The crowd shouted,“That’s right! That’s right!” Do continued, “Under AB 715, the statement “Black Lives Matter” is painted as discriminatory bias. Under AB 715, historical injustices like the theft of Native American land cannot be righted under the banner of “Land Back.”

Since the District began its investigation, Do says she has removed the Palestinian flag, along with the BLM flag, Landback flag and Puerto Rico flag.

Daniel, a member of Roybal Learning Center’s Social Justice Club, said students in the club stand behind Do in their outrage over AB 715’s straitjacket on speech and attack on Ethnic Studies. “From the Nakba to the current genocide, AB 715 is a violation of the First Amendment,” said Daniel, who noted Israel had infiltrated the US government, from the federal to the state level.”

Shared ancestry-Israel lobby cudgel

Following its investigation, the District determined Do’s conduct “subjected students to discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry or ethnic characteristic in violation of the Civil Rights Act.” The report also noted, however, that “Students generally described her classroom environment as open, nonjudgemental, comfortable …”

The charge of discrimination based on “shared ancestry” assumes that all Jews and Israelis identify and support the State of Israel and perceive solidarity with Palestine or a Palestinian flag as antisemitic.

Not everyone agrees.

Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization that features keffiyehs and watermelon caps on its website, argues that both Jewish and Arab peoples have ancient, ancestral, and spiritual ties to the land in West Asia. According to JVP, asserting exclusive Jewish rights to Palestine inevitably leads to displacement of Palestinians and erasure of their connection to the same ancestral land. Thousands of JVP members and supporters–some carrying Palestinian flags– have occupied state capitols, subway stations and lawmakers’ offices to demand the US stop funding what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry have all termed Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Daniel, the student, also challenged the notion that expressing solidarity with Palestine was antisemitic or discriminatory. “A semite is someone who speaks a semitic language, of which includes Arabic,” said Daniel, adding, a semite is not just limited to Jewish people. Being a semite extends to the same people being murdered every day by Israeli bombs. To want Palestinians to live a peaceful life and talking ill of the Israeli government–that is not antisemitic; it is the opposite”

Chilling speech

“Israeli genocide bill”

Educator unions, administrator associations, Jewish Voice for Peace chapters and the ACLU all opposed AB 715 due to concerns over the chilling of instruction and conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism–yet the state legislature approved AB 715 after midnight on 9/13/25, prompting a protester to shout from the Senate balcony, “This is an Israeli genocide censorship bill and you all know it … so this bill is aiding and abetting a genocide that is ongoing. You all have blood on your hands.”

AB 715 establishes a politically-appointed antisemitism coordinator to monitor antisemitism instruction and teacher training beginning with four-year-olds in transitional kindergarten, and follow up on complaints that can be filed anonymously by those not directly harmed by alleged discrimination; in other words an IDF soldier in occupied Palestine could file a complaint against California teachers based on hearsay and demand LAUSD administrators drop what they’re doing to pursue investigations of educators.

The District’s corrective actions, with a June 10th deadline for compliance, include administrative review of all DBM history and social science and Ethnic Studies displays and content; department-wide professional development on addressing sensitive topics;
and implementation of a site-based review process for supplemental instructional materials. According to Do, DBM’s principal has already delivered the mandated professional development, reviewing the corrective actions, including follow-up monitoring to, in the District’s words, “verify continued compliance with nondiscrimination neutrality … “

Such mandates raise the question, “What is neutral language for Israeli slaughter, starvation and torture of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians–for Israel’s obliteration of every school in Gaza and killing of over 200 journalists?” The District’s condemnation of classroom bias also raises the question of whether the District’s repeated description of the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” reflects a pro-Israel bias. A conflict suggests two equal sides. Israel is a nuclear-armed state controlling over four million Palestinians living under military occupation. The “two sides” are not equal.

The avalanche

The controversy at DBM is not an isolated example of the Israel lobby’s attempt to chill debate over Israel’s colonization of Palestine. The District’s mandates come amid an avalanche of Public Record Requests from Israel supporters seeking copies of hundreds of LAUSD teacher lesson plans, according to one LAUSD high school teacher contacted by the District. In addition, the lobby is asking the Governor to approve $10 million more for the California Teachers Collaborative on Holocaust and Genocide Education to deliver Anti-Defamation League curriculum that includes a definition of contemporary antisemitism as demonization of Israel and excludes the Gaza genocide from lesson plans.

As the State and District seek to silence teacher opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, annexation of the West Bank and bombardment of Lebanon and Iran, Gochez suggests that instead of removing Palestinian flags from classrooms, teachers might all post Palestinian flags in a collective act of resistance. Similarly the four teachers at DBM who, according to the District, removed their “Stop Genocide” posters might display them once again, with other teachers at the high school and across the District displaying the same message.

Or imagine faculties and students all wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine.

Dr. Lupe Carrasco Cardona, an Ethnic Studies adjunct professor and chair of the Association of Raza Educators, seconded the call for solidarity with all educators who “courageously, honorably and respectfully teach young people the truth about what is happening in our world.” Said Cardona, “Education should never be about fear, censorship or intimidation. We cannot accept the banning of books, posters or flags, nor can we accept attacks on academic freedom and the professional integrity of educators.”

Marcy Winograd is a retired public high school teacher and literacy coach who taught English and social studies in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is also the coordinator of CODEPINK Congress, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and co-chair of the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition based in Santa Barbara, California.