“Including the experiences and skills of people living with disabilities in the design and delivery of health systems is fundamental to achieving #HealthForAll,” wrote World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Twitter last week. Including the experiences & skills of people living with disabilities in the design & delivery of health systems […] Continue reading ->
China wants to delete language supporting rapid World Health Organization (WHO) access to outbreak sites in future pandemics from a critical document that maps out a way forward in future pandemics, a diplomatic source has told Health Policy Watch. This emerged at Monday’s start of a three-day meeting in Geneva of the global body’s Working […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – Shortly before New Year’s eve, the South African government lifted the country’s curfew and allowed indoor gatherings of up to 1000 people – despite the prevalence of the highly infectious Omicron variant. The Cabinet-level decision was taken after considering “the trajectory of the pandemic, the levels of vaccination in the country and […] Continue reading ->
Almost nine out of ten (86%) people living in urban areas across the globe, or 2.5 billion people, are exposed to unhealthy particulate matter levels, leading to the 1.8 million excess deaths in cities globally in 2019, in a study that examined urban air pollution and related mortality trends in over 13,000 cities globally. The […] Continue reading ->
A fourth shot of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine administered to individuals who received their third shot nearly five months ago produces a five-fold increase in antibodies, according to preliminary results of a first-in-the-world trial being conducted in Israel. The news comes on the same day that the country announced it would launch a trial to […] Continue reading ->
Two new large scale reviews of the effects of the two-dose Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine in children aged 5-11 shows fewer severe effects than in older groups. Tuesday’s report, by the Israeli Health Fund Maccabi covering more than 20,000 children, comes on the heels of a similar US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study […] Continue reading ->
As the world marks two years since the emergence of the first reports about a “novel coronavirus” circulating in Wuhan China, countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere are facing yet another “tsunami” of infections – this time driven by the highly-infectious Omicron variant, warned WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He spoke at […] Continue reading ->
Vaccine equity advocates see huge potential in India’s decision to grant an emergency use license to CORBEVAX™, an open-license vaccine dubbed “The World’s COVID-19 Vaccine” by its developers at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. The protein sub-unit vaccine, engineered at Baylor’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), received the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) […] Continue reading ->
A global grassroots movement of scientists based on crowdsourcing ideas, expertise, and goodwill has already generated – and freely released – more than half of the known structural information on the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. Based on this, they are now on a quest for an open-source drug that can block the virus from replicating. […] Continue reading ->
WHO has issued new advice to countries supporting booster campaigns for “high risk groups” but still opposing “blanket” campaigns – or vaccines for children and adolescents under the age of 18. The latter, top WHO officials contend, could divert too many vaccines from low-and-middle member states that have low vaccination coverage rates – leading to […] Continue reading ->