GENEVA – Opening the World Health Assembly under a “health for peace” banner that is this year’s theme, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned WHA member states that achieving ambitious global health goals – from snuffing out COVID-19 to expanding universal health coverage – will be virtually impossible if regional conflicts like ones ongoing in Ukraine, […] Continue reading ->
More stable funding for WHO, but only incremental progress on reforms in global pandemic response are expected out of the upcoming World Health Assembly, where member states also will debate and discuss over two dozen other critical health issues that don’t always make the headlines.   The 75th World Health Assembly, WHO’s annual meeting of member […] Continue reading ->
Within a matter of days, over 50 cases of suspected and confirmed infection with the monkeypox virus have now been reported across Europe and North America, including the first reported case in the United States yesterday, said Massachusetts state officials; the case involved a man who had recently traveled to Quebec, Canada. That adds the […] Continue reading ->
The United States National Institute of Health (NIH) has finalized an agreement with WHO’s COVID-19 patent sharing facility (C-TAP) to share the patent rights on 11 government-funded coronavirus medicine and vaccine technologies – in what is perhaps the most significant agreement to date with WHO to share closely-guarded pharma know-how.   The announcement was made today […] Continue reading ->
A new WHO White Paper on strengthening Health Emergency Preparedness and Response supports the creation of a “Global Health Emergency Council” under WHO auspices and some “targeted amendments” to existing International Health Regulations governing emergencies. However, the new White Paper, issued under the name of WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also avoids taking […] Continue reading ->
A core group of WHO member states have agreed on a landmark move to boost their annual “assessed” contributions to the global health organization to cover 50% of its core budget needs by 2028-2029 – but contingent on internal WHO reforms to boost efficiency and transparency.   Partly in response to the reform call, a reshuffle […] Continue reading ->