Happy thought for 31 December 2025

Have a Happy Thought:

This year-end post is inspired by a social media trend that has definitely helped my mental health: #ShareGoodNewsToo

 

2025 was a bad year for disease.

As in, humans made great progress in controlling or eliminating some diseases that have plagued us for millennia (or in some cases, before we even became humans).

Image: World Health Organisation

 

The World Health Organisation has tracked (and helped make) some great gains in global health this year:

·      Maldives became the first country to achieve “triple elimination” of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B.

·      Brazil also eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV, making it the most populous country in the Americas to achieve this historic milestone.

·      Burundi, Egypt and Fiji eliminated trachoma

·      Guinea and Kenya eliminated sleeping sickness.

·      Niger became the first African country to eliminate river blindness.

·      Tuberculosis (TB) deaths declined significantly, with the WHO African and European regions achieving 46% and 49% reductions over the past decade.

·      Georgia, Suriname and Timor-Leste were certified malaria-free, and 7 additional new countries in Africa introduced malaria vaccines – a key intervention for child survival.

·      1.4 billion more people enjoy healthier lives thanks to reduced tobacco use, cleaner air, and better water and sanitation.

o   More than 120 million people have quit tobacco since 2010 – a 27% decline 

·      HIV and tuberculosis rates worldwide are falling, and fewer people need treatment from neglected tropical diseases.

·      When Sudan virus disease emerged in Uganda in January 2025, WHO facilitated the launch of a clinical trial for a new candidate vaccine within four days – the fastest ever during an outbreak. 

 

Meanwhile, our ability to fight disease continues to get better and better!

·      Scientists used incredibly specific gene-editing to treat a previously 100% fatal form of T-cell leukaemia

·      We have a new type of malaria treatment that’s even more effective (99.2%) than the previous (96.7%), and it is effective against strains that had been developing resistance to existing treatments

·      Cancer screening tests are getting better – cheaper, less invasive, and more accurate

 

I really can’t word this any better than was put into this blog post (long, because it is a recap of a whole year, but very worth reading! And possibly subscribing.)

You can’t fact-check people out of a feeling. For hundreds of millions, the world feels like a terrible place right now. If you’re a democracy activist languishing in a Hong Kong jail or a single mother in New Jersey struggling to pay the rent or a cobalt miner risking your life in the DRC, no amount of statistics or lines going up on a graph is going to matter.

But I do think the collapse merchants have gotten carried away. We now have an entire genre about living in the worst timeline, about how fascism is inevitable and the kids are doomed, and almost all of it is created by people cosplaying the apocalypse from positions of extraordinary comfort. They’re being lazy. It's easier to predict the end of the world than to wrestle with the truth, which is that some things are genuinely scary, some things are going great, and most of it is just really complicated.

 

So while things are not perfect (understatement), and this is not a time to be wearing rose-tinted glasses:

People around the world are still doing amazing work to make the world a better place, and, despite what comes across in the daily news, their efforts are paying off.

Let this be a reminder to us all, especially in times where we are overwhelmed by the unending bad news, to “look for the helpers”, and remember that “hope is a verb with its shirtsleeves rolled up.”