The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and African Centers for Disease control signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday to providing technical support to African manufacturers of antimalarial drugs that would help bring their products up to WHO-approved standards – thus ensuring wider use of locally-produced drugs on the continent and beyond. The move […] Continue reading ->
As COVID-19 cases are starting to spike around the world once again, a new study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine “provides safety assurances to the global population” about fourth vaccine shots. The study, conducted in Israel, is the first large-scale research into the safety of the additional booster. It comes at the same time […] Continue reading ->
There are emerging hopes that sometime in 2023, WHO can declare that the COVID-19 global health emergency is over, said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a pre-holiday press briefing on Wednesday. Meanwhile, however, the world continues to invest some $2 trillion in wars and “killing each other” – but not nearly […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19, conflicts and climate change are posing additional challenges to efforts to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) in the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMRO), the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged on the eve of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day on Monday. “The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the vulnerability of our health, social protection and economic systems,” Dr […] Continue reading ->
Whether researchers provide good quality data or not, healthcare systems will continue to function. In this episode of the “Global Health Matters” podcast, Margaret Gyapong, director of the Institute for Health Research at the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ghana, tells host Garry Aslanyan that this has been a hard lesson that has […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has pushed back on media reports that its board has decided to end COVID vaccine support for 37 middle-income countries next year – and end altogether the dedicated COVAX vaccine facility, supplying free vaccines to some 92 low- and middle-income countries, in 2024. A high-ranking official at Gavi told Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
Spending on health increased worldwide by 6% on average in real terms in the year 2020, according to the World Health Organization’s latest global review of health finance. The analysis found that global spending on health reached US$ 9 trillion in 2020, or 10.8% of global gross domestic product (GDP), but remains highly unequal across […] Continue reading ->
The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office announced on Tuesday that it supports extending the deadline on whether the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement should be extended to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics. Trade ministers adopted the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement in June, giving members scope to diversify the production […] Continue reading ->
The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. […] Continue reading ->
Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at […] Continue reading ->