An emotional Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), revealed that her father had died of tuberculosis (TB) as she thanked advocates for their work to secure the adoption of the UN political declaration on TB at the high-level meeting (HLM) on Friday. Urging UN member states to devote the necessary resources to […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK – While the United Nations (UN) high-level meeting (HLM) on universal health coverage (UHC) adopted a political declaration on Thursday committing member states to accelerate health for all, this will remain a paper promise unless governments invest in primary healthcare. This was the challenge issued to member states by World Health Organization (WHO) […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, explicitly excluded the world’s five largest emitters of greenhouse gasses – China, the United States, Russia, India and Japan – from his Climate Ambition Summit, held Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The United Kingdom, another major polluter, was notably absent from the summit, amid reports […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK – A long-awaited political declaration by United Nations (UN) member states on more effective pandemic preparedness and response was approved at a High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Wednesday – without the anticipated political objections raised by 11 member states including Russia in a letter to the global body earlier in the week. The declaration […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK – Despite the weaknesses of the political declaration on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (PPPR) expected to be adopted by the United Nations (UN) High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Wednesday, some world leaders believe that the UN is a more appropriate forum to thrash out the global pandemic response than the World Health Organization […] Continue reading ->
Health systems in Africa are under considerable strain: rapid demographic change, rising non-communicable diseases, and emerging and re-emerging threats such as COVID-19 and Ebola are increasing demands on limited health services. Africa, however, faces a challenging period in health financing to meet these increasing needs. Health spending in most countries remains far short of what is […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK CITY – A leading killer, hypertension, receives barely a nod in many of the world’s health systems – even though it’s the key contributor to deaths from cardiovascular disease, which claims about 17.9 million lives annually and is the single largest cause of deaths in the world today. Addressing this systemic neglect is […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK CITY – World leaders issued a political declaration Monday warning that the world is nowhere close to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) it set in 2015. The declaration, adopted at the first UN high-level political forum on the SDGs since 2019, comes at a time when progress on the goals has been […] Continue reading ->
Eleven conservative countries have declared that they will not support the adoption of the political declarations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR), universal health coverage (UHC), and tuberculosis (TB) on the United Nations agenda this week. Although the countries did not raise their objections during Monday’s SDG Summit, the […] Continue reading ->
Election fever is sweeping through the World Health Organization (WHO) in three of its six regions – Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO), South-East Asia (SEARO), and Western Pacific (WPRO). It matters who becomes their regional directors because they have considerable decentralised authority to influence the health chances of billions. Its regions also make or break WHO globally. […] Continue reading ->