As more high income countries adopt COVID-19 passes for entry to venues like sporting and cultural events, restaurants and even workplaces, public opposition to the use of the public health tool is also growing – despite the fact that these same countries enjoy very widespread access to vaccines and rapid COVID tests.  However, countries like […] Continue reading ->
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), fostered by the wanton use of antibiotic-laced feed and growth-boosting supplements for livestock and poultry, could lead to the “next pandemic”, warns the first-of-its-kind report on AMR that focuses on the long-ignored global animal health sector.  The new report, Feeding Resistance, on the growing threat of superbug risks associated with animal health […] Continue reading ->
World Trade Organization Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has ” high hopes” that the WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12) that convenes at the end of November can deliver decisions that curb harmful fisheries subsidies as well as improving access of low- and middle-income countries to COVID medicines and vaccines.  But WTO members must overcome a series of […] Continue reading ->
While there has been significant global progress in curbing conventional tobacco products, newer tobacco and nicotine products such as e-cigarettes are evading regulation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2021 report on the tobacco epidemic. Some 5.3 billion people are now covered by at least one of the six tobacco ‘MPower’ control measures recommended […] Continue reading ->
Vaccine access advocates issued increasingly desperate, last minute calls upon the World Trade Organization to take action over a stalled initiative to impose a temporary waiver on intellectual property for COVID medicines, tests and vaccines – even as the initiative appeared doomed to a stalemate for the rest of the summer.  Ahead of the opening […] Continue reading ->
The long-delayed 2020 edition of the Tokyo summer Olympics opened Friday against the sober backdrop of soaring COVID infection rates, but with plenty of pomp and ceremony nonetheless –  including a massive fireworks display and an aerial show of drones resembling planet earth hovering above Olympic Stadium, while John Lennon’s “Imagine” echoed across the night […] Continue reading ->