The devastating floods that submerged one-third of Pakistan in 2022 have severely disrupted the country’s vaccination programme, leaving millions of children at risk of preventable diseases. The floods severely damaged health infrastructure, causing overall immunization coverage in the country to drop to 64% in 2022, from a national average of 74% in 2020, according to […] Continue reading ->
Norway’s Ambassador for Global Health, Dr John-Arne Røttingen, has been appointed CEO of the charitable foundation Wellcome, one of the world’s largest funders of science aimed at solving urgent health issues, the body announced on Wednesday. Røttingen, who will assume the position in January 2024, has had a versatile and varied career. He started out […] Continue reading ->
Dr Hanan Balkhy has been elected as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO), becoming the first woman ever to have been chosen for the challenging position in the world’s most conflict-ridden region. A Saudi national, Balkhy will assume the position on 1 February 2024 for a period of […] Continue reading ->
Excessive bleeding is the main cause of women dying in childbirth, yet the global guidelines to tackle postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) are inadequate and outdated. To rectify this, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have developed the world’s first PPH roadmap, and aim to have new global guidelines by the first quarter of 2025. […] Continue reading ->
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced on Monday that it would invest $40 million to advance the development of mRNA innovation and production in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to help them produce low-cost and high-quality vaccines at large scale. In an address to the more than 1,400 scientists, policymakers, and donors attending […] Continue reading ->
One billion people were classified as migrants in 2020, including 26.4 million refugees and 4.1 million asylum seekers – many driven from their homes by political conflict and climate crises. But migrants and refugees seldom get access to mental health services, despite being amongst the most at-risk people. On World Mental Health Day on Tuesday, […] Continue reading ->
The inaugural Health Day at COP28, the upcoming UN climate summit in Dubai, will launch the one-year progress report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, a key outcome of last year’s summit in Egypt. The agenda, which was agreed at COP27, includes a number of commitments to increase finance and investment in climate change adaptation, […] Continue reading ->
“I was held down, tied up, forcibly medicated and placed in a seclusion cell,” Jarrod Clyne of the International Disability Alliance told the international launch of a guide on mental health and human rights on Monday. This had happened in New Zealand “on the basis of a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, during a manic episode”, […] Continue reading ->
Negotiations at the World Health Organisation (WHO) about how to amend the International Health Regulations (IHR) to make them fit to tackle the next pandemic will be extended until as far as May 2024. This was resolved at the Working Group on the IHR amendments, which ended on Friday following a week-long meeting with a […] Continue reading ->
GENEVA – At the 1853 World Fair, the inventor of a new safety brake technology for elevators, Elisha Otis, demonstrated his innovation by posing an elevator right over the heads of a crowd of visitors and then cutting the cables. The new security brake kicked in. His gimmick helped build trust in an innovation that […] Continue reading ->