News seen by Remaides: Global health action alert against attacks on science

The report by Global Health Action aims to highlight the threats and attacks against French health and environmental agencies, emphasizing their crucial role in the face of health and climate crises. These attacks threaten the independence of these structures and challenge their key role in managing health and environmental risks. These attacks come at a time of exacerbated health and environmental crises, particularly related to climate change. This ongoing challenge tends to weaken their ability to anticipate, monitor, and regulate. This strategy is part of a logic: to serve private economic interests by weakening public structures. But let’s get back to the context.

Climate change impacts health and the environment
In its report, Global Health Action highlights a well-established fact: climate change intensifies health and environmental risks. It lists several arguments in support: over 70% of human diseases originate from animals; about 16,600 deaths were linked to heat in Europe in 2025; pollution and pesticide use account for more than a quarter of global mortality; the journal The Lancet estimates 546,000 deaths per year, between 2012 and 2021, attributable to climate change.

Decreasing resources for health agencies
The report estimates that budget cuts and staff reductions are weakening the capacity of French health and climate agencies. Global Health Action mentions, among other things, that Meteo France has seen its grant reduced by 20% between 2013 and 2022, with a 25% decrease in staff since 2012. “On the other hand, the Office National des Forets has lost over 1,000 jobs since 2017, affecting fire monitoring. The OFB (French Biodiversity Office) has been subject to political attacks and attempts to suppress or reduce its resources, especially since 2025. Yet, this structure plays a key role in combating water overexploitation, pollution, and degradation of natural areas. The restructuring of Public Health France also threatens its independence and its ability to monitor and effectively prevent epidemics (see below).

Threats to regulation and resource protection in favor of private interests
Health and environmental agencies play a vital role in managing natural resources in the face of climate change, but the reduction of their autonomy promotes private interests’ influence in environmental regulation. The report suggests that some economic players seek to limit agencies’ power to protect their interests; private interests that override the common good. For example, agricultural and industrial lobbies attempt to reduce the powers of ANSES (National Food Safety Agency) and other agencies, sometimes with the government’s complacency, or even blessing. Parliamentary amendments (lobby relays) and government initiatives aim to transfer or restrict their competencies. Finally, a political oversight agenda threatens scientific independence and expertise reliability. This is especially the case with attempts to place ANSES under the Ministry of Agriculture’s control. A decree was indeed issued and published in July 2025, the report explains. It states that ANSES, which issues authorizations for plant protection products (substances used to protect plants from diseases, insects, or weeds), must take into account the ministry’s priorities. “This decision threatens ANSES’s independence, whose expertise is crucial for shedding light on the risk these products pose to citizens’ health,” the report states.

Risks to public health
The report explicitly mentions the government’s decision to reduce the scope of action of Public Health France (SpF). A whole paragraph is devoted to this. “While more than 700 cases of chikungunya were recorded in France in the summer of 2025 (…) the threat of the tiger mosquito is a reality for more and more French people,” notes Global Health Action. “In such situations, the surveillance and prevention carried out by the national health agency, Public Health France, are essential to inform the public and authorities about the evolution of the phenomenon and prevention measures to be taken.” Since the first cases of chikungunya, SpF has ensured enhanced epidemiological monitoring of this arbovirus, allowing for “regular assessments of the situation, coordination of local responses with regional health agencies (ARS), and information to residents and communities on the measures to put in place.” Of course, SpF does not only work on this disease. The agency has missions that extend to prevention, action against epidemics, pandemics, the effects of cold and heat waves on health, etc. Public Health France is, however, the subject of government challenge. In early 2025, an inspection mission by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS), mandated by the Ministry of Health, aimed to assess the agency’s missions and resources. Global Health Action notes that the IGAS report has not been made public. This is provided for in the texts, but the decision is rare. It is already a problem that this document is kept secret. It is even more problematic that this document would have “served as justification for the agency’s restructuring and transfer of its skills to the Ministry of Health in January 2026.” This decision, not at all agreed with health professionals and civil society, has been widely denounced by many public health actors, arguing that this “restructuring threatens independent scientific and health expertise essential for informing public decisions.”

Public Health France, a emblematic case
The government’s unilateral decision, announced following an investigation by France Inter, has sparked strong reactions. A collective of 350 public health actors published a tribune in the world, denouncing this reorganization and calling for the preservation of the agency’s role in prevention campaigns. “We hope that the government will display a clear public health policy and restore the agency to its rightful place, particularly in prevention and health promotion,” explained Anne Vuillemin to AFP, president of the French Public Health Society, leading this initiative. Other reactions condemned what the government sought to present, at the end of January, as a “strategic recentering” of Public Health France, with several missions, such as managing strategic stocks and coordinating the health reserve, being transferred to the Ministry of Health. Public health communication campaigns will be the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and Health Insurance from 2027. This “announcement of a possible reorganization of Public Health France” is taking on an air of “quasi-dismantling of its prevention campaigns,” alert the signatories of this tribune, from the scientific, medical, and associative realms. Some politicians have also expressed concerns. Hendrik Dravi, an ecologist deputy and SpF administrator, feared that “this political interference in prevention campaigns will weaken scientific independence.” On the other hand, the Senator of Oise (UC) Edouard Courtial submitted a written question (#07990) that extensively refers to the arguments of the tribune published in Le Monde and signed by 350 public health actors. The parliamentarian asks the Minister of Health, Stéphanie Rist, about the “precise intentions of the government regarding the evolution of Public Health France’s missions, particularly in the prevention and information campaign fields” and asks “what guarantees will be provided for maintaining the independence of scientific expertise and its public dissemination, and if a formalized evaluation and consultation with stakeholders are planned before any reform.”

From the government’s side, Stéphanie Rist explained that the transfer of communication campaigns aims to “offer citizens clearer messages,” as a “multiplication of campaign bearers has muddled public health communication.” Her office added that this aims for “greater efficiency” rather than “saving money.” These arguments are undoubtedly based on elements put forth by the IGAS report, but as the government refused to publish it, the basis for this decision remains unknown. SPF was created in 2014 to provide France, like the United States or England, with an entity bringing together prevention and health promotion missions, alerts and surveillance, and interventions. Pejoratively seen as too costly and ineffective by detractors, public agencies acting on health and the environment often justify many measures as a need to “rationalize public expenditures in a context of budget constraints.” However, the NGO’s report makes it clear that budget considerations are a decoy for attacks “motivated more by economic interests.” Global Health Action argues:

1: Nearly a quarter of global premature mortality is due to factors resulting from human activity such as pesticide use or pollution; 2: Regulating activities and products is key to protecting citizens’ health; 3: This regulation relies on independent scientific expertise produced by these agencies; 4: Critics target the agencies precisely for their role in regulating harmful activities and products. When regulation impacts private economic interests, these actors deploy significant resources to lift constraints on their activities. Global Health Action explains, “These attacks are not coincidental; they result from increasing pressure exerted by private actors seeking to influence public decisions to avoid impacting their economic interests.” The NGO alerts that “all these attacks on biodiversity and health protection agencies represent a threat to the independence of French scientific expertise. The impact of these attacks is real and directly affects the reliability of the expertise produced and the capacity to identify priority action issues.” Global Health Action concludes: “Weakening health and environmental agencies means depriving ourselves of structures capable of detecting the next risks to populations’ health.”
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