The launch of the Nutrition for Growth Year of Action aims to combat global hunger, exacerbated by COVID disruptions and climate change. After a year marred by huge setbacks for global food security, a group of governments and nutrition organisations this week launched a forward-looking initiative for 2021 to address the global hunger and nutrition crisis. […] Continue reading ->
Indian lockdowns, telehealth in California, a “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes in the Philippines – three public health advocates reflect on how these and other events have shaped the narrative around non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The three included Apoorva Gomber, a medical doctor; Gina Agiostratidou, a philanthropic donor; and civil society leader Katie Dain, found […] Continue reading ->
Three-quarters of COVID-19 trials reviewed specifically excluded pregnant women, despite investigating medications that are already used by expectant mothers. Authors of an opinion piece published in The Lancet Global Health journal, based on a data review, warned that although pregnant women are among those most in need of effective and safe therapies, they are routinely […] Continue reading ->
Striking through the politicised warnings and potentially hollow gestures, a new study has found that COVID-19 vaccines could remain out of reach until at least 2022 for nearly one- fifth of the global population – despite months of pleas and appeals to ensure their widespread global distribution. The study, published in The BMJ, is the […] Continue reading ->
Global health and air pollution advocates have hailed a landmark court case which has recognized air pollution as a factor into the 2013 death of a 9 year-old girl – for the first time in history. On Wednesday, a Coroner Court in the United Kingdom ruled that air pollution was one of the causes of […] Continue reading ->
As the dust began to settle in June 2009 in the aftermath of the global recession, 81 million young people found themselves out of work, as the youth unemployment rate rose to 13%. But unemployment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – with 1 in 6 young people worldwide having already lost their job […] Continue reading ->
One out of every four health facilities worldwide lacks even the most basic access to water supplies. And in the world’s 47 least developed countries, one in every two facilities lacks such access, according to a new WHO report, co-authored with UNICEF, on access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health care facilities. The […] Continue reading ->
WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday issued yet another plea to leaders of rich countries to “honor their pledges” to fund COVID-19 vaccines sufficient to immunize the highest risk groups across the world. He spoke a day after South African officials raised the spectre that the world was heading towards a state […] Continue reading ->
Raising a conversation about patients rights and patient care over the din of the COVID-19 pandemic is not easy. But hundreds of patient groups and thousands of attendees drew together virtually last week at the 2nd Asia-Pacific Patients Congress to talk about how to reclaim a voice and space for patient rights in the wake […] Continue reading ->
As COVID-cases rose rapidly in Delhi this November, the strong correlation to increasingly dangerous levels of air pollution in the state has brought more attention to the political pressure to address the health emergency. Delhi saw its highest number of COVID-19 cases in November, totalling more than 175,000. The city administration also recorded more than […] Continue reading ->