World Health Organization Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has welcomed the call by Costa Rica’s President, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, for WHO to launch an initiative that would “pool rights to technologies that are useful for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic.” “I welcome his initiative & call for pooled rights […] Continue reading ->

Warning: Attempt to read property "post_title" on null in /home/clients/58f2a29976672af522a8f4d82ffa28b6/web/wp-content/plugins/better-image-credits/better-image-credits.php on line 227
In normal times, Diego Zapata, undersecretary in the City of Medellin’s Mobility Department, worries about how to advance better public transit systems, cycling and pedestrian networks – to get more people moving around the city. But recently, he and his boss Carlos Cadena began supporting the City’s Health Department in its scramble to reduce travel […] Continue reading ->
The US Food and Drug Administration granted investigational emergency use approval for convalescent blood plasma as a potential COVID-19 treatment on Tuesday.  Cloned antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients showed impressive ability to neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the disease, in cell cultures, according to a paper published Wednesday on the preprint server BioRxiv. Two of […] Continue reading ->
Costa Rica’s president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada has appealed to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, to “pool rights to technologies that are useful for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic”. The presidential letter dated Monday, 23 March, and co-signed by Minister of Health, Daniel Salas Peraza, […] Continue reading ->
As the explosive impact of COVID-19 ripples globally, there’s a clear plea from many regions and countries: stay home and help “flatten the curve” of infection. People from China to Italy have seen the consequences of the virus spreading too quickly with hospitals overwhelmed and doctors forced to make heartbreaking decisions about who lives and […] Continue reading ->
A World Health Organization – Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) joint campaign was launched on Monday to “kick out coronavirus” as global confirmed cases of COVID-19 soared past 350,000 Monday afternoon.  “Football can reach millions of people, especially younger people, that public health officials cannot,” he added. It took 67 days to reach the […] Continue reading ->
US Food & Drug Administration authorization of a rapid COVID-19 test on the GeneXpert platform, one of the most widely-used TB diagnostic tools in the world, could be the first crack in the doorway to wider testing capacity in low- and middle-income countries, leading TB advocates told Health Policy Watch.  There are some 23,000 GeneXpert […] Continue reading ->
Manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the COVID-19 pandemic response should be scaled up by 80 to 100 times to meet the projected needs of the healthcare workforce, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Amid a growing PPE shortage crisis in hotspots like Italy, the United States, and Iran, some 26 million healthcare […] Continue reading ->