conflict

Incubator shortages, premature births strain Gaza's hospitals

  • In a bid to revive Gaza's neonatal care system, the UN children's agency UNICEF has scaled up its work to supply medical equipment such as incubators, ventilators and monitors to hospitals. 
  • As monitors beep and doctors consult near them, two tiny newborns lie silently side-by-side, sharing a single incubator in a southern Gaza hospital running short on space and supplies.
  • In a bid to revive Gaza's neonatal care system, the UN children's agency UNICEF has scaled up its work to supply medical equipment such as incubators, ventilators and monitors to hospitals. 
As monitors beep and doctors consult near them, two tiny newborns lie silently side-by-side, sharing a single incubator in a southern Gaza hospital running short on space and supplies.
Gaza's youngest already face an extremely precarious entry into the world, given the dire humanitarian situation in the war-shattered territory that borders Israel and Egypt. 
But for babies needing specialist care, such as those born prematurely, the road ahead is even more perilous.
"The situation is dire: there is no oxygen available for them, nor is there any spare incubators in the hospital," said Hatem Dhahir, head of the neonatal department at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
"We're trying to transfer them to other hospitals, but they're always full and the situation is very bad. Most of the children need oxygen and are very underweight, and things are going from bad to worse," he told AFP.
The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated the Palestinian territory's healthcare system, with many medical facilities rendered completely or partially unusable. 
Ongoing Israeli restrictions on goods entering the Gaza Strip mean medical supplies and specialist equipment are also running low.
Israel says it is preventing the entry of items that could also have military use as it accuses Hamas -- which carried out the worst-ever attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 -- of plotting further violence.
Dhahir said Nasser hospital had seen a significant increase in the number of premature births in recent months, as well as twins and triplets. 
The influx was forcing staff to place two or even three babies in each incubator, he said.
In March, the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA said that one in three pregnancies in Gaza were high-risk and 70 percent of newborns were premature or underweight.
Incubator sharing significantly increased mortality risks, it said.

'No room'

Nearly the entirety of Gaza's population was displaced at least once during the devastating war, sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The fighting flattened swathes of the territory, left hundreds of thousands of people living in tents and temporary shelters and shattered vital infrastructure such as sanitation and access to safe water.
Despite a US-backed ceasefire declared in October 2025, the Israeli military continues to target Palestinians it says are militants.
A UN-mandated inquiry published in June said that severe shortages of food, medical supplies, fuel and the collapse of healthcare services had an enormous impact on maternal health.
"Against this background, rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, low-birthweight infants and congenital defects have increased," the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry said.
Heart conditions were among three types of congenital defects to have particularly increased, the commission said, citing medical practitioners.
In southern Gaza, Mona Ahmad was accompanying a baby taken to Nasser hospital in late August and diagnosed with a serious congenital defect in which the heart's two main blood vessels are switched in position.
"We received a final report stating that the baby was suffering from transposed arteries and needed to be transferred, as there was absolutely no treatment available for her here," Ahmad told AFP.
"The baby spent a full week in the neonatal unit and was discharged because there was no room for her there," she added.
In a bid to revive Gaza's neonatal care system, the UN children's agency UNICEF has scaled up its work to supply medical equipment such as incubators, ventilators and monitors to hospitals. 
Including work that began before the ceasefire, UNICEF has supplied 93 incubators to six facilities across the Gaza Strip.
But challenges remain immense and more needs to be done, said Toby Fricker, chief of advocacy and communications for UNICEF Palestine, following a visit to a neonatal intensive care unit in the territory. 
For now, "through the pure... resilience of the doctors, of people, things are working," he said.
vid-acc/sct/jfx/ane

euthanasia

UK lawmakers throw out bill to legalise assisted dying

  • Earlier this year, lawmakers in Scotland, where health is a devolved issue, rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying.
  • British MPs on Friday rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote and blow to campaigners in favour of the controversial procedure that is legal in a host of countries including Canada and Switzerland.
  • Earlier this year, lawmakers in Scotland, where health is a devolved issue, rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying.
British MPs on Friday rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote and blow to campaigners in favour of the controversial procedure that is legal in a host of countries including Canada and Switzerland.
Plans to legalise assisted dying have had a long, emotional and ultimately stalled passage through parliament, with protesters on both sides of the debate regularly demonstrating in Westminster.
Lawmakers in the House of Commons had taken the historic step to back a separate but identical bill legalising the practice for some terminally ill adults last year, before that was scuppered in the unelected upper house.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was reintroduced this parliamentary session but MPs struck it down after hours of impassioned debate Friday, with 286 voting against and 270 in favour.
The bill would have allowed adults in England and Wales who have been given less than six months to live and can clearly express a wish to die the option to opt to end their own lives.
They would need the approval of two doctors and an expert panel to make the decision.

'Scary'

Campaigners against assisted dying celebrated the result, with Gordon Macdonald from the Care Not Killing group calling it a "decisive vote".
He said MPs had "over the last 24 months seen through the pernicious pretence that this draft legislation was safe and wouldn't put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives prematurely".
Disability rights campaigner Philip Friend, 80, told AFP he was relieved.
"We were really worried about this bill," he said, adding opponents saw it as "very dangerous because it didn't have the safeguards, it didn't investigate coercion".
"It was a very, very scary place."
But outside parliament, campaigners hoping for the law change wiped away tears and comforted each other.
"This is a devastating setback for dying people," said charity Dignity in Dying, adding that "this issue is not going away".
Rebecca Wilcox, the daughter of Esther Rantzen -- a high-profile television personality who has a terminal diagnosis -- told AFP she was "completely devastated".
"My mum just described this as a tragic day," she said, noting one British newspaper had called the previous parliamentary blocking of the bill "a vandalism of democracy".
"We will come back and we will do it again and we will still fight in the same dignified, measured way," she vowed. 

Neutral PM

New Ipsos polling in late August 2026 indicated sustained backing for assisted dying among British adults aged 16-75, with two in three supporting the draft legislation.
Ahead of Friday, new Prime Minister Andy Burnham had said he would sit out the vote so as to not "unduly influence the debate".
Since becoming the country's leader in July, Burnham has relaunched his years-long push to improve social care for the elderly and vulnerable, and has supported prioritising palliative care.
The controversial draft assisted dying legislation passed in a landmark vote in the House of Commons last June. 
But it was torpedoed by more than 1,200 amendments in the upper House of Lords, which was accused of obstructing and delaying the bill.
Earlier this year, lawmakers in Scotland, where health is a devolved issue, rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying.
Lawmakers in the self-governing British dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man have already approved assisted dying legislation, but the moves are awaiting royal assent.
aks/jj/phz

euthanasia

UK lawmakers throw out bill to legalise assisted dying

  • The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was reintroduced this parliamentary session but MPs struck it down after hours of impassioned debate Friday, with 286 voting against and 270 in favour.
  • British MPs on Friday rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote, a blow to campaigners in favour of the controversial procedure that is legal in a host of countries including Canada and Switzerland.
  • The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was reintroduced this parliamentary session but MPs struck it down after hours of impassioned debate Friday, with 286 voting against and 270 in favour.
British MPs on Friday rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote, a blow to campaigners in favour of the controversial procedure that is legal in a host of countries including Canada and Switzerland.
Plans to legalise assisted dying have had a long and emotional passage through parliament, with protesters on both sides of the debate regularly demonstrating in Westminster.
Lawmakers in the House of Commons had taken the historic step to back a separate but identical bill legalising the practice for some terminally ill adults last year, before that was scuppered in the unelected upper house.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was reintroduced this parliamentary session but MPs struck it down after hours of impassioned debate Friday, with 286 voting against and 270 in favour.
The bill would have allowed adults in England and Wales who have been given less than six months to live and can clearly express a wish to die the option to opt to end their own lives.
They would need the approval of two doctors and an expert panel to make the decision.
Campaigners against assisted dying celebrated the result, with Gordon Macdonald from the Care Not Killing group calling it a "decisive vote".
He said MPs had "over the last 24 months seen through the pernicious pretence that this draft legislation was safe and wouldn't put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives prematurely".
Outside parliament, campaigners hoping for the change in law wiped away tears and comforted each other.
"This is a devastating setback for dying people," said charity Dignity in Dying, adding that "this issue is not going away".
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham had said he would sit out the vote so as to not "unduly influence the debate".
Since becoming the country's leader in July, Burnham has relaunched his years-long push to improve social care for the elderly and vulnerable, and has supported prioritising palliative care.
The controversial draft assisted dying legislation passed in a landmark vote in the House of Commons last June. 
But it was torpedoed by more than 1,200 amendments in the unelected upper House of Lords, which was accused of obstructing and delaying the bill.
Earlier this year, lawmakers in Scotland, where health is a devolved issue, rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying.
Lawmakers in the self-governing British dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man have already approved assisted dying legislation, but the moves are awaiting royal assent.
aks/jj/phz

virus

DR Congo Ebola outbreak spreads to 7th province

  • The South-Ubangi governor's office in a statement sent to AFP on Friday officially declared an outbreak of the virus in the northwestern province following analysis of a suspected case.
  • An Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo, the deadliest in its history, has spread to a seventh province, bordering the Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville, the governor of South-Ubangi province said on Friday.
  • The South-Ubangi governor's office in a statement sent to AFP on Friday officially declared an outbreak of the virus in the northwestern province following analysis of a suspected case.
An Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo, the deadliest in its history, has spread to a seventh province, bordering the Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville, the governor of South-Ubangi province said on Friday.
The Democratic Republic of Congo officially detected the latest outbreak in mid-May, its 17th of the highly infectious virus that has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the last 50 years.
The current outbreak in the DRC has killed 3,310 people out of 6,843 confirmed cases, according to the latest figures from the Congolese authorities.
It began in northeastern Ituri province and spread to conflict-plagued, remote eastern and northern regions where armed groups have roamed for decades, the presence of the state is weak and health infrastructure is largely lacking.
The South-Ubangi governor's office in a statement sent to AFP on Friday officially declared an outbreak of the virus in the northwestern province following analysis of a suspected case.
An Ebola patient died there after undertaking a long journey across several provinces, some of which have not so far had cases of the disease, acting governor Jean-Rene Galekwa told reporters on Thursday.
The patient who died in South-Ubangi had developed symptoms in the capital of Tshopo province, Kisangani, where Ebola cases have been reported, after having travelled to Rwanda, then Uganda and Ituri province, Galekwa said.
He then went by boat on the Congo River to Lisala in Mongala province where he spent two days in a health centre before being transferred to another hospital in Gwaka, in South-Ubangi, he added.

Fears of spread

"The route taken both by the patient and by the boat exposes the population" of the provinces of North-Ubangi, Tshopo and Mongala, Galekwa said. 
"Thirty-eight people have been identified as having been in contact with the patient and have been placed in quarantine," he said.
Ebola is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and can cause severe internal and external bleeding and organ failure.
The organisations that have been tackling the outbreak say the funding is largely insufficient to monitor and isolate cases in the sprawling central African country.
The World Health Organization said this week it needed 5,000 extra health workers to help respond to the virus.
It said it had nearly 1,400 beds across 59 treatment centres but that it estimated it needed another 1,600 beds.
The current epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment. Several treatments and vaccines are being tested.
str-clt/kjm/rlp

children

Bangladesh measles crisis kills more than 1,000 children

  • The disease has kept spreading in Bangladesh even as health authorities rolled out a mass vaccination drive to combat the outbreak.
  • The death toll from measles in Bangladesh has topped 1,000 children since March, health officials said Wednesday, admitting that failures in a vaccination drive may have fuelled the outbreak.
  • The disease has kept spreading in Bangladesh even as health authorities rolled out a mass vaccination drive to combat the outbreak.
The death toll from measles in Bangladesh has topped 1,000 children since March, health officials said Wednesday, admitting that failures in a vaccination drive may have fuelled the outbreak.
The South Asian nation of 170 million has recorded 1,002 deaths and 187,484 infections among children, making this year's outbreak the country's deadliest in decades, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Measles is highly contagious, spreading through coughs and sneezes, and has no specific treatment once caught.
Complications can include brain swelling and severe breathing problems. Although anyone can catch the disease, young children are particularly vulnerable.
The disease has kept spreading in Bangladesh even as health authorities rolled out a mass vaccination drive to combat the outbreak.
DGHS spokesman Zahid Raihan said more than 18 million children had been vaccinated so far, and teams were searching for those who had missed inoculations.
"We couldn't achieve herd immunity," Raihan told AFP.
Official figures show that around four million children were left out of the campaign, leaving pockets of vulnerability that experts say have fuelled the outbreak.
"Measles cannot be eradicated and the aim was to reduce casualties. We will keep vaccinating our children," Raihan said.
Controlling the outbreak, however, required more than vaccinations, Raihan said, pointing to the need to tackle chronic malnutrition among children -- a factor that can worsen the disease's impact.
The mounting measles crisis is also stretching an already burdened healthcare system as authorities grapple with a simultaneous surge in dengue fever cases.
"Hospitals with the capacity to handle 50 dengue patients are now dealing with 500," Raihan said.
Nine people died from dengue on Tuesday alone, while 1,571 patients were admitted to hospitals, according to health department data.
Since January, Bangladesh has recorded 45,475 dengue cases and 130 deaths. In 2023, there were 321,017 cases of the mosquito-borne disease -- the highest figure recorded in the country.
Junior Health Minister MA Muhit warned that dengue cases could rise further in the coming weeks.
"If we take measures to keep our surroundings clean, we may see a lower incidence of dengue," he said at a seminar on Wednesday.
"Otherwise... dengue may take a dangerous turn in the last week of September and early October."
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is scheduled to inaugurate a three-month nationwide anti-dengue campaign on Saturday.
sa/abh/ami

computers

Kenyan start-up makes robotic limbs to sign for deaf kids

  • The team works with Africa One, a humanoid robot they built, to refine and expand the signs their mechnical arms are able to produce.
  • In a school for the deaf in Kenya, children signed their excitement as a team demonstrated how a robotic arm could revolutionise their studies.
  • The team works with Africa One, a humanoid robot they built, to refine and expand the signs their mechnical arms are able to produce.
In a school for the deaf in Kenya, children signed their excitement as a team demonstrated how a robotic arm could revolutionise their studies.
Roughly 300,000 children in the east African nation have a hearing impairment, according to the Kenya Society for Deaf Children, but just 20,000 were enrolled in schools as of 2024. 
Kenyan start-up ZeroBionic, co-founded by 22-year-old Norah Kimathi, hopes to tackle some of the educational difficulties they face.
It has built a mechanical hand that can translate a teachers' voice into sign language in real time, allowing deaf children to learn alongside their hearing counterparts.
For the pupils at the Kasarani Treeside Secondary School for the Deaf in Nairobi, there is another element of the technology that is even more promising.
The robotic arms are trialled by deaf teachers to record and store signs using a bodysuit, which ZeroBionic imported for the task.
In the process, they are building a database of technical terms -- drawing on English, American and Kenyan signs -- that is helping to expand the language and make it easier for deaf children to learn and communicate.
"The biggest challenge we faced actually was in Africa we don't have a standardised African sign language dataset," Kimathi told AFP at the company's tiny lab in Nairobi. 
"No one else had built this on the continent... We had to start from scratch," she said.
Many deaf children in Kenya learn a patchwork of makeshift signs, and the local dialect lacks many technical terms used to teach subjects like maths and biology.
Sharon Mumbe, 19, one of the pupils at the deaf school, says it gives her "hope for the future".
"I'll be able to understand different concepts better," she told AFP.
Numerous prototype limbs litter the surfaces in Kimathi's lab.
The team works with Africa One, a humanoid robot they built, to refine and expand the signs their mechnical arms are able to produce.
Everything has been designed and built in-house, using recycled materials to reduce costs and environmental impact, produced using 3D printers that thump away constantly in the background. 
Each hand costs roughly $350 and can last for up to two years. They are already in 78 schools across Kenya.
They boast a 92-percent speech-to-sign accuracy rate and Kimathi says the results have made all the long hours in the lab worthwhile.
"We know we're going to put a smile on someone else's face," she said. 
rbu/er/kjm

healthcare

Sweden immigration restrictions spark healthcare concerns

BY JOHANNES LEDEL

  • - Electoral stakes - In the general election on September 13, opinion polls show that healthcare is the top concern among voters.
  • A dramatic tightening of Sweden's migration policy has sparked concern in a healthcare sector that is ever more dependent on immigrants, professionals warned ahead of a general election on Sunday.
  • - Electoral stakes - In the general election on September 13, opinion polls show that healthcare is the top concern among voters.
A dramatic tightening of Sweden's migration policy has sparked concern in a healthcare sector that is ever more dependent on immigrants, professionals warned ahead of a general election on Sunday.
"I'm the only one born in Sweden here today. The rest are born abroad," said Johanna Bjorkman, a nurse at the NU Hospital Group in the southern city of Trollhattan.
"There wouldn't have been any operations without them," she told AFP outside the operating room in the cardiology department.
Davood Javid, a senior specialist in the department, explained that three out of four of the 20 doctors working at the cardiology unit were born abroad.
Nationally, 37 percent of specialist doctors were born abroad, according to the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR), while over half (53 percent) of nursing assistants were.
Following a large influx of asylum seekers in Sweden in 2015, successive left- and right-wing governments have tightened asylum and immigration rules.
Originally from Iran, Javid first arrived in Sweden in the 1980s. He said he and his colleagues all felt the change. 
"The tone has hardened in Sweden, and the debate has become highly polarised," he told AFP.
Doctors and specialised nurses often earn enough to meet Sweden's new, higher income requirements for work permits, but nursing assistants, elderly-care workers and adult children of healthcare workers in many cases do not.
Javid started speaking out publicly after his nephew's two daughters, aged 21 and 24, were deported, having lived in Sweden for eight years while studying to become nurses. 

Families 'torn apart'

The case received national attention as an illustration of what became known as "teenage deportations" -- when people who came to Sweden as minors with their parents are deported as adults because they cannot meet the income requirements.
Javid said decisions like these also leave parents who work in the health sector questioning whether to stay in the country when their children are deported.
"The individual loses out, the family is torn apart, and society pays the price for this," he told AFP.
He complained that the migration debate was too focused on criminality and not what "immigrants had contributed to society".
Bjorn Jarbur, director of the hospital, told AFP at least one employee had left after their child was deported.
He said losing competent colleagues was a problem at a time when a lack of qualified staff was more pressing than a lack of funds.
"Today, it's not money that's the limiting factor, it's finding employees with the skills we need," Jarbur said.
"If, for example, we had been able to recruit more nurses, then we would have been able to have more beds open," he explained.
In Sweden's last election in 2022, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's coalition came to power via an alliance with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, vowing to crack down on immigration and crime.

Electoral stakes

In the general election on September 13, opinion polls show that healthcare is the top concern among voters.
Polls have for months pointed to a victory for the centre-left opposition headed by the Social Democrats, but the gap has narrowed in recent weeks.
On the campaign trail, Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson told AFP he was not convinced by the argument that the lack of labour in healthcare meant that the migration policy needed to be relaxed.
"What people often forget in that discussion is that those who immigrate to Sweden also have needs when it comes to welfare, healthcare, and social care," Akesson told AFP after a press conference.
"Statistically, they often have greater needs than those born in the country," Akesson added.
Tommy Moller, a professor of political science at Stockholm University, told AFP however that he had noted a shift heading into this year's election.
Moller said attention to the "teenage deportations" had led the government to "change its position".
In June, the government along with the Sweden Democrats, among other measures, raised the age at which the children of migrants would be considered adults from 18 to 21.
He also noted that parties like the Centre Party and the Green Party were actively saying Sweden needed more immigration in their campaigning.
"They are raising these issues. It hasn't really been opportune to do so before, because public opinion has been so critical of immigration," Moller said.
jll/po/rlp

science

Canada eyes researchers looking to leave 'hostile' US

BY FANNY ALARCON

  • Trump has also launched a campaign against certain American universities, accusing them of operating with a left-wing bias and advancing priorities he views with suspicion, including climate science.
  • Fed up with the funding restrictions surrounding her research on the links between climate change and health, American epidemiologist Sheryl Magzamen has left the United States for Canada.
  • Trump has also launched a campaign against certain American universities, accusing them of operating with a left-wing bias and advancing priorities he views with suspicion, including climate science.
Fed up with the funding restrictions surrounding her research on the links between climate change and health, American epidemiologist Sheryl Magzamen has left the United States for Canada.
The former University of Colorado researcher, now with the University of Montreal, is one of the dozens of scientists to quit US-based posts in recent months for a role in Canada, which is making a push to attract US talent.
Watching academic freedom decline in the United States was "very hard," Magzamen told AFP, citing multiple grant withdrawals in a research area that has been derided by President Donald Trump's administration.
But she said the University of Montreal has offered her "an incredible amount of resources" for long-term research -- and she has started learning French to help integrate into Quebec, Canada's majority-francophone province.
Since Trump returned to office last year, major Canadian institutions have publicly declared their desire to recruit leading US-based researchers who may be looking to move.
Canada's largest hospital group, the University Health Network, said last year it would open its doors to a range of foreign experts, including US scientists studying vaccines, an area where the Trump administration has made sweeping and controversial policy changes.
Trump has also launched a campaign against certain American universities, accusing them of operating with a left-wing bias and advancing priorities he views with suspicion, including climate science.
Canada, which is locked in an escalating and costly trade war with the United States, has launched a CAN$1.7 billion (US$1.23 billion) 12-year program to recruit researchers globally, but it's clear the United States is a top poaching target.
"While certain countries are cutting research and turning their back on academic freedom, we're doubling down on science and we're doubling down on research," Industry Minister Melanie Joly said last month.

'Hostile' climate

Molecular biology professor Phillip Zamore is set to leave the University of Massachusetts for McGill University in Montreal in April.
"The climate towards science in the US now is hostile," he told AFP, condemning an approach he called "counterproductive to doing great science."
"I decided I had to move somewhere else," he added, praising Canada for continuing to value "scientific enterprise."
Quebec City's Laval University has hired 15 researchers from the United States during Trump's second term.
Laval's rector, Sophie D'Amours, told AFP that the recruitment effort has been helped by what she called "state control over science" in the United States.

'Healthy competition'

Canada is not the only country eyeing talent from elite US institutions, which for decades has been a major engine for global innovation.
The European Union allocated 500 million euros (US$581 million) from 2025 to 2027 to lure US-based researchers.
In May, France announced that it had identified 60 foreign scientists it wanted to recruit, mostly US-based researchers.
McGill University's vice-president for research and innovation, Dominique Berube, called the battle for US talent "a healthy form of competition" and an opportunity for Canada to bring in specialists in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and medicine to aerospace.
Zamore, the molecular biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, said he used to receive two applications for postdoctoral positions per week, but those applications have completely dried up.
"It is now much more attractive for students to study in Canada than in the United States," he said.
fa/mg/bs/md

children

EU faces revolt over social media ban for children

BY RAZIYE AKKOC AND FREDERIC POUCHOT

  • But Brussels faces criticism from all sides over the plans: children's rights groups fear that social media limits will infringe on minors' freedoms, while digital rights groups raise concerns over age verification.
  • The European Union is poised for a big reveal of its plans to keep minors safe online -- but proposals to restrict their social media access and force age checks have drawn fire from children's rights groups and privacy defenders alike.
  • But Brussels faces criticism from all sides over the plans: children's rights groups fear that social media limits will infringe on minors' freedoms, while digital rights groups raise concerns over age verification.
The European Union is poised for a big reveal of its plans to keep minors safe online -- but proposals to restrict their social media access and force age checks have drawn fire from children's rights groups and privacy defenders alike.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen is set to outline how the 27-nation bloc plans to limit children's use of social media during a highly anticipated speech to the European Parliament next week.
Von der Leyen is weighing up social media restrictions on children under 13 -- which an expert panel has recommended -- or under 15, which France wants.
Her announcement will follow more than a year of pressure from many EU states including Denmark and Greece, and comes after Australia's world-leading ban in December 2025. Countries including Britain followed Canberra's example.
Social media critics have pointed to a rising body of evidence showing the negative effects of the platforms on children's mental and physical health.
Whatever the EU decides to do, the moves will be accompanied by the roll-out of an age-check system later this year to ensure the restrictions actually work.
But Brussels faces criticism from all sides over the plans: children's rights groups fear that social media limits will infringe on minors' freedoms, while digital rights groups raise concerns over age verification.
"To protect the fundamental rights of children, it is platforms that must be the focus of regulation, not children's access to online participation," Christian Cirhigiri of the Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT) Europe said.

'Platforms should change'

Civil society groups including children's rights activists worry about the consequences of limiting access, arguing it could deprive young people of social connections and resources that benefit their development.
Restrictions "would violate their rights to free expression and access to information, which are very essential rights covered even by the UN Charter" Cirhigiri told AFP.
Some 132 rights and mental health organisations and experts also oppose a blanket ban, and in a letter to von der Leyen shared with AFP, they urged the EU to force Big Tech to make platforms safer.
A potential ban has broad support among the 27 member states, but it is not unanimous.
"It is very hard to morally understand why access to information should be banned," Estonian digital minister Liisa-Ly Pakosta told AFP, arguing that "the platforms should change" instead.
The EU has already deployed its most potent legal weapon, an online content law called the Digital Services Act, to order Facebook, Instagram and TikTok this year to change their "addictive" design.
Simeon de Brouwer of digital rights group EDRi believes the core issue is not young people's online use per se -- but a failure to ensure the environment is made safe.
"The problem is that online spaces make young people easily accessible to predators, scammers, and others, and they can easily become addicted," he said.

Concerns over age checks

Australia's ban showed how teenagers could circumvent the ban through VPNs, or obfuscating their ages. 
The EU hopes its age-check app will stop this -- with users able to verify their age with their passport, national ID, via reliable providers like a bank or in person at, for example, a post office.
Critics say such an app would endanger Europeans' privacy and would also restrict people's freedom online since all users will have to prove their age.
"We are concerned about the chilling effect that age verification will have on users' online speech," Cirhigiri told AFP, since some people might lack proper documentation, while others might be reluctant to provide their ID.
Brussels insists the "user-friendly" app preserves people's privacy as it only keeps information about a person's age and no details like names or birthdays.
The EU says the app would not share any data with digital platforms, and that the tools would only communicate to establish that a user is over a certain age.
The app is based on "zero knowledge proof", whereby a "yes" or "no" answer is given in a cryptographic way without providing any personal data.
Problems, however, appeared to be on show as soon as the EU launched the app's blueprint in April, with experts finding both privacy and security flaws.
Self-described security consultant Paul Moore demonstrated how he could "hack" it in "two minutes". In July he said on X he was able to bypass the app again.
Platforms do not have to use the EU's age verification app but it is seen as the benchmark and if not, they will have to use an alternative that satisfies Brussels.
fpo-raz/ec/cw

virus

WHO says needs 5,000 more healthworkers to tackle Ebola in DRC

  • The WHO said it hoped to create 3,000 beds for patients in Ebola treatment centres in the DRC. With three medical staff needed for each patient, that means training 9,000 health workers, said Luca Fontana, a senior technical official with the United Nations' health agency.
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it needed 5,000 extra health workers to help tackle the highly contagious Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
  • The WHO said it hoped to create 3,000 beds for patients in Ebola treatment centres in the DRC. With three medical staff needed for each patient, that means training 9,000 health workers, said Luca Fontana, a senior technical official with the United Nations' health agency.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it needed 5,000 extra health workers to help tackle the highly contagious Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The outbreak, officially detected in mid-May, has spread to six provinces in the country's conflict-plagued east and northeast.
Since May 15, the virus has killed 3,175 people among the more than 6,600 confirmed infected, the WHO said, citing official Congolese figures.
Health services lack sufficient staff and resources and have been overwhelmed by the surge in cases of Ebola, which is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and can cause severe internal and external bleeding and organ failure.
The WHO said it hoped to create 3,000 beds for patients in Ebola treatment centres in the DRC.
With three medical staff needed for each patient, that means training 9,000 health workers, said Luca Fontana, a senior technical official with the United Nations' health agency.
"More than 900 beds have been built within the first two months of the response and we have now reached close to 1,400 beds across 59 treatment centres," he told a press briefing in Geneva.
"Despite this extraordinary effort, we estimate that another 1,600 beds will be required to meet the rapidly growing needs," he continued.
"Right now we have nearly 4,000 healthcare workers currently working inside the treatment centres. So it means we need 5,000 more."
Fontana said the health ministry in Kinshasa was racing against time to find suitable medical staff in other regions to bring into the Ebola-affected provinces.
"The problem is to identify those fast enough to make sure that we can cover the growing need," he explained.
"Every treatment centre that is fully staffed and functional means more life saved and a stronger chance of bringing this outbreak under control."
The current Ebola epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment. Several treatments and vaccines are being tested.
It has hit regions in the north and east where the presence of the state is weak, health infrastructure is largely lacking and myriad armed groups have roamed for decades. 
Fontana said that while in the initial stages, most patients admitted to treatment centres came from Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, sick people were now arriving from villages "far beyond" the epicentre.
This was "a clear sign" that the outbreak is spreading and the WHO response "must adapt", he stressed.
Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the last 50 years.
The worst outbreak previously recorded in DR Congo killed nearly 2,300 people of the 3,500 reported infected between 2018 and 2020.
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