“It’s not just about people with disabilities, this is about all of us,” stresses Pascal Bijleveld, the CEO of ATscale Global Partnership, an organization established in 2018 to advocate for assistive technologies (AT) access, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The first-ever global campaign to expand access, ‘Unlock the Everyday’, was launched on Tuesday at […] Continue reading ->
The Clean Air Fund (CAF) urged philanthropic funders to significantly increase their support for programs and services to enhance air quality with a new report published in time for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos. “It is vital to ramp up the scale and impact of air-quality funding from this sector,” the […] Continue reading ->
In early December, I was one of the nearly 100,000 delegates at COP28, the biggest climate conference ever held. As a senior health professional and campaigner for gender equity in health, I was pleased to see the adoption of the first ever COP health declaration. Who among us can still deny that climate change is a […] Continue reading ->
The worldwide shortage of nurses should be considered a “global health emergency” – yet governments are failing to invest in measures to retain these essential workers, according to Howard Catton, CEO of the International Council of Nurses (ICN). “The US has lost 100,000 nurses since 2020 and is predicted to lose up to 600,000 by […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its first guidelines for addressing low back pain, a condition affecting an estimated 619 million people, or one in 13 worldwide. The new guidelines are designed to enhance care quality for millions suffering from the condition, offering healthcare professionals a range of non-surgical treatments applicable in primary and […] Continue reading ->
The elimination of tuberculosis cannot be achieved if medicines are locked in a “patent panoply,” according to Indian author and journalist Vidya Kishnan. Speaking to Garry Aslanyan on the most recent episode of Dialogues, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast, the author of “Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History” said that “everything […] Continue reading ->
Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), a blood loss of 500 ml or more within 24 hours of birth, is the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Around 14 million women die a year, said Metin Gülmezoğlu, executive director of the Concept Foundation. Yet, PPH is mainly preventable. Some 99% of PPH […] Continue reading ->
Air pollution and climate change have never received as much combined attention, at such a high level, as at COP28 in Dubai. The UN’s 28th Conference of Parties on climate change has seen top-level participants from the World Health Organization (WHO), the UAE presidency, and noted expert bodies discuss the estimated 7-8 million deaths annually […] Continue reading ->
A monumental step for self-care was taken this month at the first Latin American Self-Care Regional Congress. Taking place in November in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the two-day congress brought together stakeholders from across the Latin America region to discuss critical topics, such as public policy and regulation, innovation and sustainability, and empowerment and health literacy, […] Continue reading ->
At the 2016 UN Climate Conference in Marrakesh, a small group of public health professionals from around the world laid out the shocking connections between the more than half a million childhood pneumonia deaths annually and children’s routine exposures to air pollution from both household and outdoor sources. While this was a first, our health-focused […] Continue reading ->