World leaders, representatives of international development and humanitarian organizations, and UN delegations gathered in Geneva on Monday to rally financial support for Pakistan’s recovery from the devastating floods that hammered the country last year. Pakistan has appealed for $16.3 billion to assist it to rebuild the country, and almost half this amount had been pledged […] Continue reading ->
CVS and Walgreens, the two largest pharmacy chains in the United States, totaling nearly 18,000 locations nationwide, announced plans on Wednesday to carry the abortion medication mifepristone after the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed rules for distributing the pill earlier this week. The new rule updates FDA labeling to allow any pharmacy that undergoes […] Continue reading ->
Along with a pledge to conserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity, the sweeping new deal reached in Montreal on Monday also etches a way forward to create an open-access platform for sharing gene sequences (digital sequence information) as part of new benefit-sharing arrangements. But some observers worry these policy advances still aren’t keeping up with […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations has described it as “the most important conference on biodiversity in a decade,” aimed at creating a Paris Agreement-style agreement for biodiversity. Negotiations amongst more than 100 environment ministers and 196 governments at the Conference on Biodiversity in Montreal on the world’s 15th attempt to come to an agreement to protect the […] Continue reading ->
The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and African Centers for Disease control signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday to providing technical support to African manufacturers of antimalarial drugs that would help bring their products up to WHO-approved standards – thus ensuring wider use of locally-produced drugs on the continent and beyond. The move […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has pushed back on media reports that its board has decided to end COVID vaccine support for 37 middle-income countries next year – and end altogether the dedicated COVAX vaccine facility, supplying free vaccines to some 92 low- and middle-income countries, in 2024. A high-ranking official at Gavi told Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
Spending on health increased worldwide by 6% on average in real terms in the year 2020, according to the World Health Organization’s latest global review of health finance. The analysis found that global spending on health reached US$ 9 trillion in 2020, or 10.8% of global gross domestic product (GDP), but remains highly unequal across […] Continue reading ->
This year, “Equalise” was chosen as the slogan for World AIDS day, observed 1 December. The theme is a call to action around the need to address the injustices that are fuelling the AIDS epidemic as pre-existing inequalities are exacerbated by the serious disruptions to health systems caused by the Ukraine war, COVID-19 pandemic and […] Continue reading ->
A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme warns that investment in nature-based solutions must double by 2025 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5°C, as well as halting biodiversity loss and progressively increasing land degradation. The report comes a week before world leaders will gather at the UN Biodiversity Conference […] Continue reading ->
In 2020, UNICEF estimated that “a stillbirth occurs every 16 seconds somewhere in the world.” A new study has linked air pollution to nearly half of them. The study of 137 countries is the first global analysis to assess the number of fetal deaths, putting into numbers the already documented link between fine particulate matter […] Continue reading ->