The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to begin a major polio booster vaccination campaign in Gaza next week with the dispatch of over 1.2 million vaccines to the war-torn Palestinian enclave – against a backdrop of spiralling regional tensions. WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned again on Wednesday that the presence of polio virus […] Continue reading ->
More than half a million people in Sudan’s North Darfur region are now suffering from famine conditions, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) of the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced Thursday. The escalating violence in Sudan between government troops and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which broke away from the Sudanese Armed Forces […] Continue reading ->
By the time they turn 20 years old, nearly a quarter (24%) of adolescent girls who have been in a relationship will have experienced physical or sexual violence from their intimate partner, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) published Monday found. Even though the prevalence of violence among teenagers largely parallels […] Continue reading ->
Updated: The World Health Organization confirmed Tuesday evening that it had evacuated 85 severely ill and wounded Gazans to the United Arab Emirates for advanced treatment via Israel’s Ramon airfield. The complex operation occurred as tensions escalated in the region following the deaths of 12 children in a Golan Heights Druze community – apparently from […] Continue reading ->
The Argentina-based biotech firm, Sinergium Biotech, has agreed to share know-how on the production of an mRNA vaccine for Avian influenza (H5N1) with WHO’s Tecnology Transfer Hub so that an affordable vaccine could rapidly be produced for developing countries, WHO said Monday. The agreement marks the first time that a vaccine developer has actually volunteered […] Continue reading ->
Leading global health organisations have called for Coca-Cola to be removed as a major sponsor of the Olympic Games and an end to sponsorship by “Big Soda” of all other sporting events. Sixty organisations and over 35,000 people have signed an online petition as part of the “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport “campaign, ahead […] Continue reading ->
Variant type 2 poliovirus (VDPV) has been isolated from six environmental (sewage) samples in the Gaza Strip – collected from two different collection sites in the southern city of Khan Younis as well as Deir al Balah, further north, WHO confirmed Friday. The variant poliovirus strains detected in all six wastewater samples, collected in late […] Continue reading ->
Côte d’Ivoire became the first country to roll out the new R21/Matrix-M vaccine with the first child vaccinated in Abidjan on Monday. The vaccine, co-developed by the University of Oxford and Serum Institute of India (SII), was granted prequalification status by the World Health Organization (WHO) in December last year. This follows the approval of […] Continue reading ->
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, cyberattacks, genetic engineering, and amateur-led biology experiments could all pose threats to a country, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) updated guidance on lab biosecurity. The guidance aims to help national regulatory bodies and other institutions “establish or strengthen frameworks for handling high-consequence pathogens”. It features a comprehensive set of […] Continue reading ->
To help countries and organisations navigate a complex pool of over 10,000 different medical devices, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched an online platform on Monday that will collect and standardise the information about medical equipment. Medical Devices Information System, or MeDevIS, is inspired by the WHO Priority Medical Devices List (MDL) and the Essential […] Continue reading ->