US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the official end of USAID, eliminating the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency just days after a landmark study warned the closure would cause 2.4 million preventable deaths every year. The study published 30 June in The Lancet found USAID-supported programs saved 92 million lives in low- and middle-income countries […] Continue reading ->
Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr suspended an independent presidential run to back Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, his laser-focus has been on one mission: “Make America Healthy Again” by attacking the threat of chronic disease. Now sitting atop the United States health system, the anti-vaccine scion of the Kennedy dynasty released a major […] Continue reading ->
Dr Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization’s emergency response division, held his final press conference Friday in Geneva after eight years leading the UN health agency’s response to global health crises from war and famine to disease outbreaks. In his farewell remarks, Ryan warned of an “era of collapsed funding” following the Trump […] Continue reading ->
A four year WHO-sponsored investigation of the origins of the COVID pandemic by an international group of experts has concluded that “most scientific data and accessible published scientific evidence” support the hypothesis that the novel SARS-CoV2 virus first entered the human population either directly from virus-carrying bats, or from bats to humans via intermediate hosts. […] Continue reading ->
This story was updated to reflect new developments on Friday, 27 June. Israel ordered a near-total halt to food and humanitarian aid deliveries to over two million Gazans facing a territory-wide threat of famine on Thursday after an AFP video surfaced showing dozens of armed men riding atop a convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with […] Continue reading ->
The world is within striking distance of enforcing the first legally binding treaty to protect vast areas of waters beyond national jurisdictions that cover two-thirds of the planet’s surface, a historic step that would place biodiversity in the long-lawless high seas under international law for the first time. Nineteen countries ratified the High Seas Treaty […] Continue reading ->
GENEVA, Switzerland — One in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified, a pervasive health crisis the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates kills over one million people globally each year. As the cost in millions of lives and billions of public health dollars from falsified medicines rises, member states at the […] Continue reading ->
The world’s leading polio eradication programme faces a 40% budget cut next year as the paralysis-causing virus surges in its last strongholds of Afghanistan and Pakistan and war-torn regions, threatening to reverse decades of progress toward eradicating the disease. “The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is facing a 40% budget cut in 2026,” Dr Hanan Balkhy, […] Continue reading ->
Thirty-five million tons of plastic waste have been dumped into the world’s oceans since negotiations on the United Nations plastics treaty began in Uruguay two years ago. When delegates gather for the final session of UN Environment Programme (UNEP) led talks in Geneva in August, known as INC-5.2, around 1.2 billion tons of unrecycled plastic […] Continue reading ->
African countries at the World Health Assembly called for increased support to health systems across the continent following major cuts to all World Health Organization (WHO) regional office budgets amid a financial crisis triggered by the US withdrawal from the agency and falling global health spending. The African region suffered the largest total cut, losing […] Continue reading ->