Disclosure of costs for drug research and development (R&D) and “alternative financing mechanisms” for new health products remain outstanding points to be resolved by countries in finalising a draft United Nations General Assembly political declaration on universal health coverage (UHC). A final draft of the declaration had been expected this week, but as of Friday […] Continue reading ->
Hypertension, which has been called a silent killer because it often goes unnoticed, is one of the world’s leading causes of death – potentially leading to heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure, as well as blindness. Now, a new study in The Lancet has found that two-thirds of people in low- and middle-income countries, where […] Continue reading ->
Against the background of increased cross-border infection risks, the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) – a decision that may help increase aid flows to the disease epicentre but also threaten free-wheeling patterns of […] Continue reading ->
A new UNAIDS report found that while new HIV infections have declined globally since 2010, the rate of progress has slowed, with some regions showing increases in new infections. Available resources for HIV have also dropped by US$ 1 billion in 2018, marking the first time global HIV funding declined since 2000. UNAIDS’ Global AIDS […] Continue reading ->
An estimated 820 million people went hungry in 2018, the third continuous year in a worldwide trend of rising hunger. And over one-quarter of the world’s population, or 2 billion people in all, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, according to the The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report for 2019. […] Continue reading ->
Japan said on Friday that it disagrees with aspects of an already-adopted Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution on access to medicines, claiming that there is no evidence that “delinkage” between the cost of research & development (R&D) and the price of medicines improves access to medicines. Japan also disagreed with pursuing alternative frameworks for R&D […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of a new Ebola case in the border city of Goma, WHO and its UN partners are calling on donors to make major new funding commitments to halt the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – while WHO will reconvene an expert Emergency Committee to consider if the outbreak should […] Continue reading ->
[WHO/UNICEF News Release] New York/Geneva – 20 million children worldwide – more than 1 in 10 – missed out on lifesaving vaccines such as measles, diphtheria and tetanus in 2018, according to new data from WHO and UNICEF. Globally, since 2010, vaccination coverage with three doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) and one dose […] Continue reading ->
[WHO/Europe Press Release] Brussels, Belgium, 15 July 2019 Two new studies from WHO/Europe show that a high proportion of baby foods are incorrectly marketed as suitable for infants under the age of 6 months, and that many of those foods contain inappropriately high levels of sugar. WHO’s long-standing recommendation states that children should be breastfed, […] Continue reading ->
New maximum residue limits for more than 30 different types of pesticides in animal feed and foodstuffs, updated standards for food additives, and a new standard for high value vegetable oils, and well as for hybrid varieties of palm oil, were approved today at the 42nd meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC42), the UN member […] Continue reading ->