In the wake of COVID-19, both the needs and the skills of frontline healthcare workers need to be made integral to the design of global mental health services, said experts at a Wednesday webinar, sponsored by the Geneva-based Global Self-Care Federation (GSCF).     While mental health issues have come more to the forefront during the COVID […] Continue reading ->
Travellers who are fully vaccinated with vaccines authorised in the European Union (EU) “should” be allowed entry for non-essential travel – even if these vaccines were not “produced in facilities covered by the marketing authorisation in the EU”, a European Commission spokesperson for health, food safety and transport told Health Policy Watch on Wednesday.   At […] Continue reading ->
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to strengthen the delivery of healthcare and move the world closer towards universal health coverage, but ethical considerations and human rights must be central to the design, development, and deployment of AI technologies, according to a new report released on Monday. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Ethics and Governance […] Continue reading ->
The much-trumpeted European Union COVID Digital Green Pass, which launches 1 July and is meant to vastly ease travel to Europe for vaccinated and recovered passengers is being rolled out with one important hitch. Anyone vaccinated with an AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India would not be qualified to get the pass […] Continue reading ->
The United States may have experienced nearly 17 million additional COVID-19 cases in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH study,  published this week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that for every coronavirus infection recorded until mid-2020, nearly 4.8 more […] Continue reading ->
A “terrible third wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic is now hitting Africa in full force – with about 20 of the continent’s 54 countries experiencing particularly sharp rises in new infections, African Centers for Disease Control director, John Nkengasong told Health Policy Watch at a press briefing on Thursday.  Per-capita rates of new SARS-CoV2 cases […] Continue reading ->