Science is determined to know more about cancer because, the better its functioning is understood, the better the treatments that are developed to combat it. This is known as personalized medicine. Years ago, we were only able to diagnose a breast tumor, but with the advances of recent decades, professionals can accurately know what type of breast cancer the patient suffers from and what therapy best suits them to tackle it. This is the objective pursued by the Catherine clinical trial, from the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), which will test an experimental therapy for patients with a type of tumor that has no treatment.

Less than 24 hours after the Council of Ministers approved the royal decree that will serve to regularize the situation of more than half a million immigrants throughout the State, long queues have returned in the center of Barcelona to obtain all the documentation to carry out the procedures. One of the points where a significant number of people have accumulated is the Citizen Attention Office of Barcelona in Plaça Sant Miquel, next to the cathedral. This Wednesday morning the queue to access this service goes around the building and the complaint that "things are not moving forward" is repeated. Most have been waiting for three hours. Although there are citizens waiting to carry out all kinds of procedures, there are also many people who come to do paperwork to be able to access the regularization process, which begins this Thursday, April 16, remotely.

The relentless rise in sexual infections in Catalonia in recent years has led to over 40,000 cases being diagnosed in a single year for the first time. This is not an isolated increase: these infections are a public health problem across Europe that health authorities attribute to a paradigm shift in sexual behaviors, especially among young people, who use condoms less, have more sexual partners, and engage in more behaviors considered risky. One of the infections that is particularly concerning is gonorrhea, which, according to a study, has tripled in recent years in Catalonia: the incidence of the disease has increased by 236% since 2019, reaching 152.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the 2022-2023 period.

Medicine showed its most spectacular face seventeen years ago with the functional cure of the first patient with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). But now the case of Timothy Ray Brown, known globally as the Berlin patient, is no longer an exception: there are now ten people worldwide who have managed to eliminate the virus through a complex but effective stem cell transplant. The most recent case is that of the so-called Oslo patient, a 62-year-old Norwegian and seropositive man, who was also diagnosed with a cancer of the immune system and required this intervention. Four years later, and despite having stopped receiving antiretroviral drugs, the virus remains undetectable. With one peculiarity compared to previous cases: his donor is his own brother.

Up to 692 new first-year medicine places in Catalan universities for the 2031-2032 academic year. This is the commitment announced this Friday by the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, during the Conference on Medicine at the Palau de Pedralbes, and it aims to improve access to these studies, which currently have an insufficient offer of 1,333 places, as for every vacancy there are almost four students who apply for it. This is a historic demand from the health and university sectors, which have been calling for years to increase the number of doctors trained in Catalonia to meet the needs of the system, where there is a structural shortage of professionals. The increase in places will also serve to lower the cut-off grade for medicine studies, which will favor more students being able to enroll.

It has been a year since she received blood transfusions, but until very recently she needed one a day to survive. In the last decade, she tried up to nine different treatments, using all sorts of strategies, such as antibodies, steroids, or immunosuppressant drugs. But none of them had a lasting impact. This is the case of a 47-year-old woman with three complex and serious diseases that caused her immune system – that is, the body's defenses – to mistakenly attack her own cells as if they were an external threat.

The most symbolic images of the Artemis II space mission can now be admired. The White House has distributed the first two photographs in which the Earth can be seen from the far side of the Moon and another image of the total solar eclipse that the crew has experienced from space. "Humanity from the other side" ("Humanity, from the other side", in the original message), has been the text accompanying the images distributed from the official account of the presidency of the United States.

When Lucía goes down to the park to play, the other children look at her because she doesn't behave like them. Jose, her father, explains helplessly that they had to change her school because her classmates bullied her without the teachers or families doing anything to prevent it. He is also a teacher and understands that the other children look at her when she plays; they are young and have surely never seen a girl like Lucía, who has a very rare disease that only affects 30 children worldwide. However, he does not understand the adults' lack of empathy and wonders why no one protected her at that school.

Faced with a cancer diagnosis, a disease with a poor prognosis, or a highly complex operation, Catalan citizens continue to knock on the door of the public health system, even though the number of people with private insurance grows year after year and a third of the population already has double coverage. This increase in private coverage is due, above all, to the difficulties in accessing certain health services, especially when the care is not urgent and is more focused on prevention and improving quality of life.

In Catalonia, there are more than 300,000 people waiting for an operation, a test, or a specialist visit who are on a list that exceeds the waiting time set by law. Patients who have been waiting for years to go into the operating room or who have to reschedule specialist appointments to repeat diagnostic tests that are no longer valid at the time of the consultation. While urgent care that cannot be delayed is maintained within the deadlines set by law by the Department of Health, visits and tests focused on prevention and improving quality of life are accumulating more and more patients out of schedule.

The Public Prosecutor's Office warned that the Badalona City Council failed to fulfill its obligation to provide emergency assistance to the homeless people it evicted from the former B9 high school. Specifically, it lacked a protocol for assisting the homeless through municipal services and also failed to apply the established methodology for such situations, which would have involved offering support to those affected, referring them to available residential resources, and providing follow-up care. In a document signed on March 10, the prosecutor warned the court that authorized the eviction that the council had not acted in accordance with its orders. When endorsing the eviction of the occupants of B9, the judge of the Administrative Court No. 11 of Barcelona specified that, given the vulnerable nature of the situation, it was necessary to take "the measures stipulated in the municipal services' protocol for assisting the homeless and provide them with emergency social assistance." Following this order, Following the eviction, the Public Prosecutor's Office asked the city council to clarify what measures it had taken to protect vulnerable people. who lived in building B9. The City Council's response, as described by the prosecutor, was "a report that essentially states that such a protocol is lacking." The council also pointed out that "they would not be obligated to do so under current legislation, but that they use a methodology for situations involving homelessness, social exclusion, and housing emergencies."

In 2022, the San Juan de Dios Hospital (SJD) inaugurated the Pediatric Cancer Center of Barcelona (PCCB), an international center with the capacity to treat more than 400 new cases of childhood cancer per year. That same year, a pathway was created for families from Peru, most of them highly vulnerable and desperate due to their children's dramatic situation, who came to Catalonia to receive treatment in the hospital's oncology department. Now, the Catalan Health Department intends to put an end to this: they have detected regular flows of patients to the SJD, a privately owned public center, as well as the arrival of patients of other nationalities to Vall d'Hebron and Sant Pau Hospital, and they want to regulate it. When the PCCB was launched four years ago by the Peruvian medical director, Andrés Morales, the aim was to internationalize the center and attract patients from other countries in order to fill all the beds and make it profitable. Currently, 65% of the beds are occupied. According to data from the Catalan Health Department (Salut), foreign patients represented almost half of all minors treated at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in 2025. Specifically, of the 252 children hospitalized, 123 were born outside of Spain. However, the majority of patients who have arrived since 2022 for cancer treatment are part of the public healthcare system; that is, they do not pay for treatment, as they would in a private hospital, and access services with a health card. In fact, the hospital treats almost two-thirds of all foreign pediatric patients in the Catalan healthcare system.

Oriol Mitjà (Arenys de Munt, 1980) is one of the country's best-known researchers. He played a prominent role during the COVID-19 pandemic, is one of the leading voices in infectious diseases—especially those related to poverty—works as head of section at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital, and has received numerous awards and recognitions for his scientific work. After publishing With an open heart. A story of everything I've lived through. in 2021 and The world that awaits us In 2022, the infectious disease specialist published Where light is born, where she addresses depression from her personal experience.

Aina's life, and that of her family, changed suddenly when she was just six years old due to a brain tumor. Although benign, it affected vital functions such as her vision, and three surgeries and several sessions of radiotherapy were necessary to remove it. Eight years later, she still has to undergo routine checkups at the hospital, has frequent medical tests, and is learning to live with the aftereffects she will carry for the rest of her life. Because of the tumor, she is blind and suffers from several chronic illnesses that affect her daily life and independence. At school, classes and educational materials have been adapted so that she can keep up with her classmates. She has a support teacher who helps her in the classroom, and at home, everyone adjusts to her needs to make things easier for her. Her mother, Anna, explains that, despite the aftereffects of the tumor, they do everything they can to support her in this new life, which they want to be as normal as possible.

Two years ago, Dr. Alberto Breda (Verona, 1973) successfully performed a transcontinental robotic surgery between Bordeaux and Beijing. The president of the Robotic Surgery Unit (ERUS) of the European Association of Urology remotely removed a kidney tumor from over 8,000 kilometers away, a medical milestone that laid the groundwork for Europe's first robotic telesurgery program, which is just getting started. This system connects the Puigvert Foundation in Barcelona and the San Roque Hospital in Las Palmas, 3,000 kilometers apart, allowing surgeons to operate on patients from the Canary Islands from the Catalan capital.

One of the biggest challenges for the cancer research community is the disease's ability to spread to new parts of the body. This is metastasis, a complex process that causes many cancer deaths, making it a key focus for researchers worldwide, especially those dealing with the most common tumors. This is the case, for example, with colorectal cancer, the third most frequently diagnosed cancer. Now, a team from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute has identified a mechanism that may explain how this cancer metastasizes to the liver. Specifically, they found that the absence of a particular protein allows tumor cells to cluster, migrate, and reproduce the tumor in the liver.

Sports betting, cards, and roulette are the most common forms of gambling among young Catalans, especially boys. In fact, it is increasingly common for secondary school students, that is, teenagers between 14 and 18 years old, to gamble. Last year, for example, 17% of students participated in in-person gambling, although the percentage among boys rises to 24.5% due to the marked gender gap observed in this practice. This is one of the key findings of the latest survey on drug use in secondary education (ESTUDES), conducted by the Catalan Health Department to understand the consumption habits and addictive behaviors of young Catalans.

Patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Catalonia will be able to apply for the benefit of the long-awaited ELA law Starting next week, a year and a half after its approval in the Congress of Deputies, the Catalan government will give the green light to its implementation at its weekly meeting on Tuesday, March 17th, and patients will be able to apply that same week. Once it receives an application, the Catalan executive will have a maximum of three months to respond, recognize the degree of disability, and provide the assistance. The Department of Social Rights estimates that there are around 200 people who can apply for Level III+ of extreme dependency—created specifically for this condition—which is intended to guarantee the rights of those suffering from it. incurable neurodegenerative disease to receive specialized service up to 24 hours a day if needed.

Although the fight against cancer has undergone a major revolution in recent decades, with a notable improvement in patient survival rates and quality of life, there are still tumors with a very poor prognosis for which virtually no treatment is available. This is the case with an ultra-rare tumor called giant cell tumor of the tendon sheath, which has an incidence of less than one case per million inhabitants and primarily affects young people between 20 and 40 years old. Until now, the only way to treat this tumor was with surgery, but an international study has supported the use of a promising drug that significantly reduces the tumor. Currently, the drug, called Pimicotinib, has already been approved in China and is being evaluated in Europe and the United States.

They have grown alongside the fourth wave of feminism and the rise of equality policies, but Young people are less feminist than before. Sixty percent of men in the country believe that progress toward equality has been so great that they are now being discriminated against simply for being men, and almost half believe that too much is expected of them to achieve equality between men and women. These are some of the conclusions of a large survey conducted by Ipsos and King's College London to mark International Women's Day. The report, published this Thursday, reveals marked differences between generations of men regarding gender roles. "It is worrying to see that attitudes toward gender equality are not more positive, especially among young men. Many Gen Z men not only place limiting expectations on women, but also confine themselves to restrictive gender norms," ​​laments Julia Gillard, chair of Ipsos Global. A total of 23,000 people from 29 different countries participated in the study. The authors warn that, globally, young men are more likely than those of previous generations to hold a "traditional view" of gender roles. Although respondents in Spain are more supportive of equality than the average found in the research, with more than half considering themselves feminists (44% of men and 59% of women), the results indicate that feminism is declining worldwide. In fact, in Spain—and this is unique to Spain—the percentage of people who believe that enough has been done to achieve equality is decreasing, falling from 55% in 2019 to 48% in 2026, a drop of 7 percentage points. A global decline

Across all the countries surveyed, 31% of Gen Z men agree that a wife should always obey her husband, and a third say that the husband should have the final say in important decisions. Thus, Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) are twice as likely as men of their generation to hold these views. baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) of having traditional views on decision-making within marriage, since only 13% and 17% of the baby boomers They agreed with these statements respectively.

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