The phase 3 trial of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine candidate showed modest efficacy of the vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum malaria, but was not powered to assess mortality endpoints. Impact projections and cost-effectiveness estimates for longer timeframes than the trial follow-up and across a range of settings are needed to inform policy recommendations. We aimed to assess the public health impact and cost-effectiveness of routine use of the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine in African settings.

As vaccine manufacturers tackle increasingly intractable pathogens, vaccines will be developed that show efficacy, but that are less efficacious than established vaccines. Consequently, regulatory and public health authorities will be faced with difficult decisions about whether such vaccines should be recommended for implementation and, if so, under what circumstances. The RTS,S/AS01 malaria candidate vaccine provides an important example of such a challenge.

An estimated 2·6 million third trimester stillbirths occurred in 2015 (uncertainty range 2·4–3·0 million). The number of stillbirths has reduced more slowly than has maternal mortality or mortality in children younger than 5 years, which were explicitly targeted in the Millennium Development Goals. The Every Newborn Action Plan has the target of 12 or fewer stillbirths per 1000 births in every country by 2030. 94 mainly high-income countries and upper middle-income countries have already met this target, although with noticeable disparities.

In May, 2015, locally acquired cases of Zika virus—an arbovirus found in Africa and Asia-Pacific and transmitted via Aedes mosquitoes—were confirmed in Brazil. The presence of Aedes mosquitoes across Latin America, coupled with suitable climatic conditions, have triggered a Zika virus epidemic in Brazil, currently estimated at 440 000–1 300 000 cases. Viraemic travellers have now introduced Zika virus into at least 13 additional countries, where susceptible Aedes mosquitoes have become infected and perpetuated local transmission cycles.

Antibiotics have saved countless lives and enabled the development of modern medicine over the past 70 years. However, it is clear that the success of antibiotics might only have been temporary and we now expect a long-term and perhaps never-ending challenge to fi nd new therapies to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A broader approach to address bacterial infection is needed. In this Review, we discuss alternatives to antibiotics, which we defi ned as non-compound approaches (products other than classic antibacterial agents) that target bacteria or any approaches that target the host.

The Lancet Editorial (Oct 3, p 1312) correctly identified that Coca-Cola's goals differ greatly from those of the public health and research institutions that it funds.1 All organisations concerned with public interest need to guard against conflict of interest from Coca-Cola's vast marketing campaigns to safeguard public health.

Successive Governments of India have promised to transform India's unsatisfactory health-care system, culminating in the present government's promise to expand health assurance for all. Despite substantial improvements in some health indicators in the past decade, India contributes disproportionately to the global burden of disease, with health indicators that compare unfavourably with other middle-income countries and India's regional neighbours. Large health disparities between states, between rural and urban populations, and across social classes persist.

In October, 2015, 22 scientists from ten countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, to evaluate the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat. The Working Group assessed more than 800 epidemiological studies that investigated the association of cancer with consumption of red meat or processed meat in many countries, from several continents, with diverse ethnicities and diets.

Polio eradication needs a new routine immunisation schedule—three or four doses of bivalent type 1 and type 3 oral poliovirus vaccine (bOPV) and one dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), but no immunogenicity data are available for this schedule. The researchers aimed to assess immunogenicity of this vaccine schedule.

In the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013), knowledge about health and its determinants has been integrated into a comparable framework to inform health policy. Outputs of this analysis are relevant to current policy questions in England and elsewhere, particularly on health inequalities. We use GBD 2013 data on mortality and causes of death, and disease and injury incidence and prevalence to analyse the burden of disease and injury in England as a whole, in English regions, and within each English region by deprivation quintile.