As the World Health Organization convened its Executive Board of 33 select member states last week for the first time since May, the United States appeared to be fully back inside the WHO boardroom – despite the fact that President Donald Trump had announced in July that he would leave the global health organisation due […] Continue reading ->
When donor dollars go missing, the guilty must be held to account. But when past transgressions hold country-ownership of global health programs to ransom with no clear end in sight, everyone loses. Today, almost two million people are living with HIV in Nigeria yet the latest UNAIDS figures show that only about one out of every […] Continue reading ->
Geneva, Switzerland – Moderna, Inc., one of the leaders in the race to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine, has come home — again. The biotech startup, which raised a significant chunk of its initial US$ 100 million amongst a group of far-sighted Swiss investors and private bankers a decade ago, announced Wednesday that it would be establishing […] Continue reading ->
Dr Vinh-Kim Nguyen is accustomed to straddling two worlds – academia and front-line medical work. But those dual roles took on new meaning this year as Nguyen, new co-director of the Global Health Centre of the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), travelled to Montreal during the first Covid-19 wave to treat patients and organize urgent services […] Continue reading ->
Part of a series of stories about how the coronavirus lockdowns and relaxations are playing out in different parts of Africa. For more on this, see our stories on South Africa and Ibadan, Nigeria. Kampala, Uganda – As Uganda’s coronavirus cases double in only two weeks, the Ministry of Health is considering a second lockdown […] Continue reading ->
Environmentalists and scientists have called out the recent Indian Supreme Court decision directing the government to install “smog towers” in Delhi as an injudicious move that will lead to a waste of public money. The opposition escalated after the Court on Tuesday, ordered the government to begin installing the smog towers within the next week. […] Continue reading ->
Low and middle-income countries urgently need affordable personal protective equipment, diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to ward off even bigger waves of COVID-19 infection and mortality – and global production capacity is failing to ensure timely supply even of those products now on the market. Now, more than ever, producers in poor countries need to be […] Continue reading ->
Like the delicate mesh of grandma’s crochet, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is intricately intertwined with air pollution, the two knitted together in a secret code, which research from Italy, Germany and the United States is beginning to unveil. More than ever before, the clear blue skies are telling us that it is time […] Continue reading ->
From a small and modest gathering of booths and stands in 2006, the Geneva Health Forum has grown into an international event with a strong array of scientific sessions. Although the GHF was forced to postpone its eighth annual conference, from March to 16-18 November due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that has not prevented the […] Continue reading ->
No illusion. COVID-19 is closer to us than we may imagine. And getting closer day by day. Around the world, in big cities and small centres alike, people are heading deeper into a sort of dystopian fiction, as if empty streets, latex gloves, face masks and self isolation were the new normal. Some 1.3 billion […] Continue reading ->