Negotiations on a global pandemic accord resume next Monday at the fifth meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) amid calls for more attention to be paid to a One Health approach, and less to organised misinformation campaigns. The meeting agenda is an extension of the INB meeting that ended on […] Continue reading ->
  More than 300 health facilities have been destroyed or flooded in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique in the wake of Cyclone Freddy, WHO estimates. That has left hundreds of communities without adequate access to health services even as the cyclone’s double whammy of devastation has raised public health risks including the increased spread of cholera, […] Continue reading ->
Raccoon dogs, lab leaks and Chinese secrecy have made for high drama as scientists who think they may have found the elusive “Animal X” that passed SARS-CoV2 were excluded from a data-sharing platform for “scooping” Chinese scientists. Nineteen scientists, including world-renowned figures such as Dr Michael Worobey and Dr Angela Rasmussen – have published a […] Continue reading ->
New evidence indicating that raccoon dogs from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan may have been infected with SARS CoV2 in January 2020 was published on a shared database by China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January  – but removed recently after scientists started asking questions. This was revealed at a media briefing […] Continue reading ->
Health authorities in Burundi have declared a national public health emergency response to an outbreak of circulating poliovirus type 2. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Africa region announced on Friday that polio had been detected in an unvaccinated four-year-old boy in Isale district in western Burundi and two other children who had been in contact […] Continue reading ->
Before the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was adopted in 2003, the World Health Organization had worked for many years to prevent damage caused by tobacco consumption with the goal of passing an international agreement on tobacco regulation. The agreement, however, was not moving forward. “The real breakthrough came as scientific evidence emerged showing the […] Continue reading ->