The President of the Republic of Botswana and Chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), writes about the urgency of mobilising funding to defend the gains and further progress in the fight against malaria. Despite decades of progress, we are not on track to defeat malaria in Africa. Without more resolve, innovation, financing, and […] Continue reading ->
BAD HOFGASTEIN, Austria — Artificial intelligence poses an “existential” threat to Europe’s health and social security systems through its potential to “completely replace” human work and eliminate the income tax funding base on which they depend, a leading health policy figure has warned. Clemens Marten Auer, president of the European Health Forum Gastein, used the […] Continue reading ->
Thinking back to five years ago, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was living around the corner from the Brooklyn Hospital Center. Each day, I’d take a walk through the neighborhood, but those walks became hauntingly different as I started passing refrigerated trucks parked outside – temporary morgues, there to handle the overwhelming […] Continue reading ->
A three-year investigation by the World Health Organization found that loneliness and social isolation contribute to 871,000 deaths worldwide every year, a death toll researchers said places social health in a tier “as damaging as other public health risks” such as air pollution, tobacco and alcohol. The landmark report by the WHO Commission on […] Continue reading ->
The pace of technological change today is nothing short of revolutionary, according to Dr Douglas Bettcher, Senior Advisor in the Director-General’s Office at the World Health Organization (WHO). “I think we find ourselves very strangely in the last couple of years, in what seems to be a really brave new world, brave new reality,” he […] Continue reading ->
After an early surge of spending during the COVID pandemic, public health layouts by countries at all income levels declined in 2022, on average, as compared to 2021. Meanwhile, there was a 60% increase overall in per-capita health expenditures between 2000 and 2022 – but in low income countries this was largely driven by a […] Continue reading ->
Investing in as little as $0.24 per patient per year in digital health interventions – telemedicine, mobile messaging, and chatbots – could significantly lower the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), says a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Telecommunication Union (UTI). These interventions could avert 2 million deaths and 7 […] Continue reading ->
Over 130 United Nations member states convened in New York City Sunday and Monday for a long-anticipated Summit of the Future that aimed to press the “reset button” on stalled global development goals and polarized geopolitical debate. The event, held just ahead of the annual debate in the U.N. General Assembly, kicked off with the […] Continue reading ->
As evidence mounts of the health harms of excessive social media use on children, governments and academics are mulling how to regulate and contain these harms – notably anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy recently appealed to his country’s Congress to compel social media sites to carry warning labels about […] Continue reading ->
New research suggests long-term exposure to wildfire smoke may significantly increase dementia risk, posing a greater threat to brain health than other forms of air pollution. The study, presented this week at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, examined a decade of electronic medical records for 1.2 million older adults in Southern California from 2009 to […] Continue reading ->