After a total of 12.5 hours of consultations in five informal meetings, a bloc of countries led by Thailand won WHO Executive Board approval for a landmark decision to develop a new ten year-action plan to reduce the harmful use of alcohol. Representatives of Norway and the European Union joined as co-sponsors in a compromise […] Continue reading ->
As the number of novel coronavirus infections rose again on Thursday – to 28,060 confirmed cases in China and 225 abroad – a US Centers for Disease Control official raised the possible spectre that the epidemic could become a global “pandemic” – if countries fail to take assertive action now. “While unclear how the situation […] Continue reading ->
Progress On Universal Health Coverage Depends On Political Will – And Larger National Health Budgets
The elements are all in place for expanding universal health coverage – what’s missing is more action at the country level, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO Executive Board on Wednesday. “All the political work is actually done now,” Dr. Tedros said. He was reporting on WHO action since the […] Continue reading ->
A new BMJ study by French researchers has reinforced the link between consumption of sugar-laced sodas & fruit juices and cancer incidence, in particular breast cancer. The study – the largest ever of its kind – is significant because while the link between sugar consumption and diabetes, obesity, and hypertension has been well documented, there […] Continue reading ->
Hypertension, which has been called a silent killer because it often goes unnoticed, is one of the world’s leading causes of death – potentially leading to heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure, as well as blindness. Now, a new study in The Lancet has found that two-thirds of people in low- and middle-income countries, where […] Continue reading ->
If the fight against cancer has yielded substantial results on survival rates in high-income countries, low- and middle-income countries are lagging behind, while cancer is gaining ground, with a particularly worrying trend in children. A first-ever International Health Congress on Integrative Oncology, held 28-30 June in Geneva, presented traditional and alternative medicines as precious allies […] Continue reading ->
Nine months after a historic high-level UN meeting where countries pledged to end the global tuberculosis epidemic by 2030, a chronic lack of R&D financing jeopardises that ambitious goal, said expert panelists at a briefing on the TB R&D landscape last week in Geneva, hosted by South Africa’s Permanent Mission to the UN. While there […] Continue reading ->
The ground level of the Geneva International Conference Centre was buzzing with conversations about machine learning, algorithms and deep learning, at the third edition of the International Telecommunication Union’s AI for Good global summit last week (28-31 May). A buzzword for some, an already essential tool for others, artificial intelligence (AI) powered applications seem to […] Continue reading ->
In a little-publicised move, the WHA last week agreed to close a critical loophole in the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework that could have allowed commercial vaccine manufacturers to indirectly make use of biological information about flu strains from another country – without providing that country with any benefits from the vaccines or antivirals […] Continue reading ->
There has been a dramatic increase in security incidents around the epicentre of the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but a sharp decrease in hospital transmissions, increased vaccinations, and new measures to safeguard response teams, are positive signs, WHO officials told reporters today in a briefing. Image Credits: WHO/L.Mackenzie, Catherine […] Continue reading ->
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