Unusual outbreaks of respiratory illness and pneumonia in Chinese children have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to ask the country for detailed information. Children’s hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning Province, some 800km apart, are “overwhelmed with sick children, and schools and classes were on the verge of suspension”, according to local Chinese media, as […] Continue reading ->
As the Global North poaches African doctors, healthcare falls to overworked and unmentored interns, some of whom learn medical procedures from YouTube. Fifteen of the world’s (fiscally) richest countries have over 55,000 African doctors in their health systems, a new data analysis by The Continent shows. These are doctors who qualified before entering those countries. […] Continue reading ->
Health Policy Watch recently reported that some European countries at the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement negotiations maintain that intellectual property (IP) negotiations belong at the World Trade Organization (WTO) rather than the WHO. If they mean to say that new WTO laws cannot be established at the WHO, they have a point. But […] Continue reading ->
Measles cases and deaths have skyrocketed worldwide, with 37 countries experiencing large or disruptive outbreaks in 2022 compared to 22 in 2021, according to a joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, published on Wednesday, highlights the devastating impact of declining vaccination […] Continue reading ->
Clinical trial results presented at the Union World Conference on Lung Health in Paris on Wednesday provided evidence to support the use of four new, improved regimens to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis or rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB). The endTB clinical trial found three new drug regimens that can deliver similar efficacy and safety to conventional treatments […] Continue reading ->
Two-thirds of countries no longer criminalise consensual same-sex sex, a “remarkable reversal” since the start of the AIDS pandemic that has enabled global progress against the spread of HIV. This is a key finding of Progress and the Peril, a report on HIV and decriminalisation released this week by Georgetown University’s Global HIV Policy Lab. […] Continue reading ->
A new Health Technology Access Pool (H-TAP), which aims to broaden the scope of IP and patent-sharing with low- and middle-income countries and a new African Union co-sponsored ‘manufacturing support platform’ were among the initiatives announced this week at the Second World Local Production forum in The Hague. The global forum, the second ever to […] Continue reading ->
A massive 7.5 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2022, the highest number ever – but this is positive as it indicates that countries’ ability to detect the disease is recovering after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2023 Global tuberculosis (TB) report. The two countries that contributed most to […] Continue reading ->
Time-bound waivers of intellectual property (IP) rights and benefits for countries that share information about threatening pathogens are some of the key components of the draft pandemic accord sent to World Health Organization (WHO) member states by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on Monday. These two issues have been major bones of contention in negotiations and […] Continue reading ->
BERLIN, Germany — Hours before the release of the second draft of the Pandemic Accord on Monday, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told the World Health Summit that a pandemic agreement with “major limitations” on intellectual property (IP) rights protection will “not fly” for Germany and most of its fellow European Union (EU) members. “For […] Continue reading ->