Who will steer the World Health Organization through its next chapter? Explore Health Policy Watch’s daily series examining the platforms, records, and institutional hurdles facing each contender for WHO Director-General, continuing today with Song Li. Access all candidate profiles on our dedicated election site. The formal confirmation of Dr Song Li’s candidacy by the People’s […] Continue reading ->
Six years after COVID-19, with Ebola Bundibugyo virus still raging in eastern Congo and the pandemic treaty stalled, a packed World Health Summit workshop asked why the world keeps paying for fire engines instead of fire prevention. BERLIN – By the time Katrín Jakobsdóttir opened the session, people were standing two deep along the back […] Continue reading ->
China has nominated a prominent Chinese health official for WHO Director General in the 2027 elections, multiple diplomatic sources have confirmed to Health Policy Watch. But there are mixed reports about who that candidate actually may be. Some high-level sources have cited Song Li, a senior Chinese Communist Party official who mounted a failed bid […] Continue reading ->
For nearly three hours on 29 July, the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard one sentence repeated over a hundred times. “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.” Dr Anthony Fauci, the 85-year-old retired director of the National […] Continue reading ->
As the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group reconvenes in Geneva in the quest to nail down an accord on Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS), the former President of Botswana and the President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation argue that this critical annex to the 2025 Pandemic Agreement needs to ensure benefit-sharing commitments are just as mandatory and […] Continue reading ->
As the world observes World Zoonoses Day, it’s important to remember that human health is intimately tied to the health of animals, wild and domesticated. Five years after COVID-19, the world remains alert to health threats that can cross over from animals to people. Alongside growing concerns over high-profile spillovers like avian influenza, the silent […] Continue reading ->
A four year WHO-sponsored investigation of the origins of the COVID pandemic by an international group of experts has concluded that “most scientific data and accessible published scientific evidence” support the hypothesis that the novel SARS-CoV2 virus first entered the human population either directly from virus-carrying bats, or from bats to humans via intermediate hosts. […] Continue reading ->
In a surprise appearance Tuesday before WHO member states via pre-recorded video, new US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr extended a kind of olive branch to the World Health Organization, calling for “a new era of international health cooperation, free from political influence and corporate bias.” While Kennedy did not say […] Continue reading ->
In the first episode of “Trailblazers with Gary,” Global Health Matters podcast host Dr Garry Aslanyan sat down in South Africa with Professor Tulio de Oliveira — one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in global health. Oliveira leads the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University and was part of the […] Continue reading ->
The weekend release of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report favouring a laboratory leak as the likely origin of COVID-19 – albeit with “low confidence” – has reignited a vitriolic debate. On the one side of the divide are those who argue that SARS-CoV2, the virus causing COVID-19, originated from a lab leak from […] Continue reading ->