A rare, severe inflammatory illness – largely believed to be associated with COVID-19 – is putting children in ICUs in the United Kingdom and the United States. The children present with symptoms similar to toxic shock syndrome or Kawasaki’s disease – a pediatric heart disease that causes inflammation or swelling of the blood vessels, according […] Continue reading ->
A new report published Wednesday provides guidance to African governments on how to use data to chart a way out of COVID-19 lockdowns. Concerns that the economic impact of stringent stay-at-home orders may become too tough to bear for families has some African countries considering adapting or easing public health restrictions. Some 69% of people […] Continue reading ->
Countries from around the world committed 7.36 billion Euro for the global coronavirus pandemic response Monday, nearly reaching the ambitious 7.5 billion Euro initial goal that had been set out only a week ago in a press conference with heads of state from Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the World Health Organization. The United […] Continue reading ->
Reducing new cases of malaria among pregnant women remains one of the key challenges on the road to malaria elimination – a goal that was celebrated last week, on World Malaria Day, 25 April. Although malaria deaths fell by nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2018, pregnant women remain among the groups most at risk […] Continue reading ->
Preliminary results of a clinical trial released by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that in patients who received remdesivir recovered faster than those who did not receive the treatment. The largest trial to date, which followed 1063 patients, found that patients who received the drug recovered on average 4 days earlier than […] Continue reading ->
“Epidemics, such as this one or any other, by their very nature, feed off existing inequalities and make them worse. And that’s what we see COVID-19 doing to inequalities between countries and within countries.” – Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds and the global economy grinds to a halt, how […] Continue reading ->
When the World Health Organization sounded the alarm by declaring a ‘public health emergency of international concern‘ on 30 January, “the world should have listened,” said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his strongest response to date, to repeated allegations by the United States that WHO failed to act quickly enough in the […] Continue reading ->
In the largest global collaboration to address the COVID-19 crisis so far, the World Health Organization, European Commission, and other partners including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), launched a new campaign to accelerate development of COVID-19 diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines – and just as critically ensure that they are affordable and accessible worldwide. […] Continue reading ->
Essential health programmes such as polio eradication and trauma management, and programmes in the World Health Organizations’ Emergencies program, will be hit hardest by the suspension of US funding to the WHO. “The reality is for my programme, a lot of that US funding is aimed at direct life saving services to people in the […] Continue reading ->
In characteristically soft-spoken tones, World Health Organization Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued his strongest rebuttal yet to the recent allegations by United States President Donald Trump that the WHO had hidden information in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, or failed to inform WHO member states rapidly enough. Calling upon his own […] Continue reading ->