There are rights that, once universalized, stop being debated. No one asks today if you have to have contributed enough to have the right to be treated in a public hospital. But until 1986, that was exactly the case. The general health law promoted by Ernest Lluch changed this logic: health ceased to be a benefit linked to contributions to become a right of citizenship. This year marks forty years since that law, and the Ernest Lluch Foundation —of which I am a patron— has received the Creu de Sant Jordi. But, beyond all that that reform achieved —and what remains pending—, there is a fundamental idea that we have not yet managed to extend to other areas.Forty years later, we have another debate about universalization. Coverage for everyone of the school canteen —today a service that depends on whether families can afford it or if they can prove they are in a situation of poverty or social exclusion— has made its way to Parliament. The fundamental question is the same as in 1986: to whom does this right belong?We lead the rankings for child poverty in Europe. More than 7% of children do not have a minimum intake of proteins guaranteed every two days, a figure that has not stopped growing in recent years. At the same time, almost three out of ten children are overweight, above the European average. Two pieces of data that seem contradictory, but which share the same explanation: income. Malnutrition due to poverty today is not going hungry. It is eating badly: ultra-processed, caloric, and nutritionally empty products.And here is where the logic of lunch grants shows its limits. If the problem of child poverty is structural, the solution cannot depend on demonstrating that you are poor enough to deserve aid. The dining space cannot be social assistance. It is part of the school day —children spend about a third of their time there in primary school—, and education is a guaranteed right for everyone. Furthermore, targeted policies have a hidden cost: they stigmatize, generate bureaucracy and can end up weakening the social support that sustains them. Universality, on the other hand, builds rights.It is not a Scandinavian utopia: it is a European reality. Finland has been guaranteeing a daily hot meal for all its pupils for seventy-five years. But now so do Croatia and Slovenia —by the way, with broad parliamentary consensus and with a notable citizen impulse—. London also did not wait for the unproductive British government and has already served more than 100 million universal school meals. The international evidence is overwhelming: the benefits in health, education and equality far outweigh the initial investment.In 1986 we decided that health could not depend on income. Now it is time to decide the same about school meals.

You already know that the new threat, hantavirus, is transmitted through rodent droppings, and those of us who live in the countryside know that humans are in contact with them all day long. Our cats hunt them (and bring them to us), our gardens and fields are full of them. But those of you who live in the city also have them nearby. There are rats in Plaça Catalunya, but also in the warehouse of the shop that just served you this canned drink you are sipping now. The sole of my shoe has surely stepped on mouse droppings in the subway car I took this morning and it may have carried it to the floor of the bar where I am now writing these lines, where it will be swept up by a waiter, who will arrive home and sit down to watch a series with his feet on the sofa table... They tell us, yes, that not all rodents have the disease, that we shouldn't worry if we come into contact with them, and it's safe, because otherwise humanity wouldn't exist. But do rodents also transmit it among themselves? That not all rodents have it doesn't mean things have to continue this way from now on. Swine flu teaches us this.

The hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship was detected late and poorly, and here we are, urgently searching for passengers who were in contact with the infected and counting cases of people who have self-isolated in Singapore or are under surveillance in the United States. And the Spanish government has not presented the best image of coordination on such a sensitive matter.

The news of the appearance of an infectious outbreak of hantavirus on a luxury cruise ship in Atlantic waters has made headlines in all media and occupied large headlines. The memory of six years ago with the coronavirus pandemic has resurfaced. Words like isolation, quarantine or R0 have resonated. Are we back there again?

In just one year, the amount of cocaine detected in Barcelona's wastewater has practically tripled, according to the latest study by the European Union Agency for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EUDA). During 2025, the presence of this substance in Barcelona's wastewater was 185% higher than in 2024, thus returning almost to 2017 levels after several years of decline. However, Lleida ranks higher than Barcelona in absolute terms, after Tarragona, which until now led that ranking in the StateTarragona, in addition to being the leading city in Spain, had traditionally been the second European urban center with the most cocaine in its wastewater, second only to the Flemish city of Antwerp, home to one of Europe's main cocaine entry ports. However, the Catalan city has decided to withdraw from the project. Furthermore, Antwerp no longer leads this ranking; that position has been taken by Middlesbrough in northern England. The second city in Europe is Bristol, followed by Lleida, the leading city in Spain. In fact, the capital of the Segrià region is surprising because, unlike the two previous cases, it lacks a port. Nevertheless, Lleida has more cocaine in its wastewater than Antwerp, Granada, or Barcelona, ​​which ranks fourteenth.

At least eight babies in the state have suffered vomiting and intestinal problems after consuming infant formula under investigation for containing a toxin called cereulide. Five of those affected required hospitalization. The contaminated batches have already been recalled, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in its weekly public health alert bulletin, and an investigation is underway in all member states where the formula is sold.

They obtained more than 700 boxes of fertility treatments at no cost using over 500 forged prescriptions. They then sold the drugs below market price to women who couldn't afford them and sought alternatives on websites like Wallapop and Milanuncios. This public healthcare fraud, targeting women trying to become mothers, amounts to €226,000. Those implicated included a primary care center employee and a pharmacist from Sant Adrià de Besòs, the director of a fertility clinic in Palma, and two women from Seville, a mother and daughter. Although almost all of them tried to evade responsibility by presenting themselves as victims of the scam, all five have been convicted. sentenced to barely minimum terms a decade after the fraud with a sentence handed down a year after the trial.

It looks like it will fine healthcare users who commit violence against healthcare staff. And among these acts of violence are "raising one's voice, intimidating, insulting, or threatening, whether in person or through social media, as well as assaulting or causing material damage inside or outside the centers."

The arrival of immunotherapy in hospitals, the birth of gene editing and walking devices, the first drugs against Alzheimer's and injections for weight loss... It's difficult to look back and choose just a few milestones that demonstrate how, in the last fifteen years, medicine has funneled through countless advancements. Since 2010, tens of millions of medical articles have been published in high-impact journals, and as you read these lines, scientists and laboratories are not slowing down. Since its first issues, the ARA has reported on and delved into many of these achievements, and has not been oblivious to the ethical and economic challenges that health research has faced. Nor has it been unaware of the profound crisis of confidence that some disciplines have experienced in the last five years.

The residents of Roses have gone 24 hours without using their tap water normally. If they want to drink it or use it to prepare food, they must first boil it. This is what the City Council has recommended after detecting a large amount of organic matter. The council emphasizes that the contamination detected does not pose an immediate "danger" to people's health, but asks that the instructions provided by the Department of Health be followed as a precaution. The situation, however, could last a few weeks.

Populist hijacking, according to ChatGPT, consists of appropriating social policies and conditioning them to partisan or clientelist criteria. Left-wing populism promises to expand the welfare state with a strongly redistributive discourse that may clash with fiscal sustainability, and right-wing populism defends social benefits but "only for those at home" and excludes immigrants or minorities. Both cases carry a great risk: the welfare state may cease to be universal and become a tool of political polarization instead of an instrument of social cohesion.

Health authorities have asked residents of Bonmatí (Selva) not to drink tap water, as they have detected the presence of cyanuric acid. Public Health professionals recommend avoiding its consumption because it is a chemical component often used as a chlorine stabilizer in swimming pools. "As a precaution, it cannot be used for cooking or drinking until the analysis results are available," they warn.

Coca-Cola, snow, powder, white lady, parakeet, merchandise... These are all different names for the same drug: cocaine. It is the second most widely used narcotic in Europe after marijuana, and an estimated 2.7 million young people—twice the population of Barcelona—used it last year. In its latest report, the European Drug Agency (EUDA) warns that there is increasingly more cocaine available on the continent and that this has led to a "significant" increase in the "health and social costs" associated with this drug.

This week, I was admitted to Sant a Pau Hospital as a companion during a surgical procedure that required an overnight stay and then home. And I was delighted to discover that even in large public organizations, it is possible to improve service by listening to users.

Dengue fever is no longer just an imported threat arriving on airplanes. It's a homegrown reality in Catalonia. By the summer of 2024, the outbreak of eight cases in Vila-seca (Tarragonès) –the largest recorded in Spain– forcefully confirmed it: the virus is circulating here, transmitted by native mosquitoes. This episode is not an anecdote, but an alarming sign that reflects a profound transformation: global warming and mass mobility have shattered old epidemiological boundaries. A patient with fever and bone pain can no longer rule out a tropical disease without traveling. Faced with this new normal, the response cannot be fragmented. Human, animal, and environmental health are intrinsically linked. The solution has a name, One Health', an integrative approach that becomes an imperative necessity.

Among the various issues taken into account when distributing resources from the common regional financing system is the public health coverage of the population. If Muface were to disappear and civil servants who have chosen the private option were to be served by the public health system instead of by a mutual insurance company, such as Adeslas or Asisa, some autonomous communities would see a significant increase in the number of people their public system is required to serve. This would have a direct impact on the distribution of resources from the financing system: some communities would see these resources grow, while others would lose. This is the case of Catalonia, which would stop receiving €183.5 million. This calculation was reached by the Fiscal Authority (AIREF) through a simulation prepared within the framework of the report published this Monday on the efficiency and effectiveness of Muface.

Muface is back in the spotlight. But this time the motive isn't a new public tender to provide private healthcare to civil servants (1.6 million people), but an analysis carried out by the Independent Fiscal Authority (AIREF) on its effectiveness and efficiency. Broadly speaking, AIREF proposes that future civil servants stop attending mutual insurance companies and join the public healthcare system, so as not to continue swelling structures like Muface, which has become an anomaly in Europe. In fact, the Spanish state is the only country that has a public healthcare system and, at the same time, a separate regime for public employees. "Greece and Portugal already reformed it in 2008, coinciding with the financial crisis," recalled the organization chaired by Cristina Herrero.

Everything pointed to the fact that the creation of the State Public Health Agency would be approved with the support of a large majority in the Congress of Deputies. Health Minister Mónica García had assumed this for granted this Thursday morning during the debate on the initiative. She only expected Vox to vote against it because the rest had endorsed the text during its passage through the Health Committee, prior to the vote in the plenary session. The confidence was such that even the director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES) and the public figure in COVID management, Fernando Simón, attended the session from the guest gallery. But everything ended up going wrong: against all odds, Junts and the PP joined Vox and defeated the initiative.

Last year, 18.2% of the Spanish population needed a consultation to treat a mental health problem or psychological or emotional distress, and although the majority initially sought care in the public health system, half ended up finding it in the private sector. These are the conclusions of the health barometer published this Thursday by the CIS, which confirms that although the majority of citizens (59%) turned to the public system, in the end less than half (47%) were treated in these centres. Private professionals assisted a third of those who needed this care and in most cases the patients treated did not have insurance that covered this care.

In less than two months, 110 cases of measles have been diagnosed in Spain, 17 of them reported in Catalonia. Last year, 217 were identified, according to the State Network for Epidemiological Surveillance. These data confirm a clear acceleration of infections, but the researcher at the National Center for Epidemiology-Carlos III Health Institute (CNE-ISCIII) Noemí López Perea assures that the majority of infections are imported and that, therefore, the State has not lost the status of elimination of the disease granted by the WHO.