As the new moon marking the beginning of Eid festivities rose on Thursday evening, people in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum sheltered from bullets and explosions as prayers that a ceasefire to honour the end of the holy month of Ramandan would take effect went unanswered. At least 400 people have been killed in a […] Continue reading ->
Seventy-five years ago on Friday – World Health Day – the World Health Organization’s (WHO) founding constitution became the first document to formally recognize health as a human right. Three-quarters of a century later, a WHO battered by the COVID-19 pandemic is juggling how to adapt to new health threats with achieving its most basic […] Continue reading ->
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the first senior United Nations (UN) official to visit northwest Syria since the war began 12 years ago. The visit was a bid to underline the organization’s commitment to the region, which has provided around a third of all medicines to arrive in northwest Syria in […] Continue reading ->
By the time you finish reading this article, at least two women will have died from complications in pregnancy or childbirth. In the next 24 hours, another 798 will lose their lives. Nearly all of these women will be from low-and lower middle-income countries, and nearly all of their deaths will have been preventable. These […] Continue reading ->
The earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria this week is now the deadliest the world has seen in over a decade. By Wednesday evening, 11,600 people had been confirmed dead. Tens of thousands more are injured. As deaths continue to mount, search and rescue teams from across the world are in a race against the […] Continue reading ->
A new UN Environment report calls for more attention to be focused on the environmental factors fostering the development of strains of drug-resistant bacteria immune to all known antibiotics, known as “superbugs”. By 2050, the UN estimates that up to 10 million deaths could be caused by superbugs and associated forms of antimicrobial resistance, matching […] Continue reading ->
World leaders, representatives of international development and humanitarian organizations, and UN delegations gathered in Geneva on Monday to rally financial support for Pakistan’s recovery from the devastating floods that hammered the country last year. Pakistan has appealed for $16.3 billion to assist it to rebuild the country, and almost half this amount had been pledged […] Continue reading ->
Along with a pledge to conserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity, the sweeping new deal reached in Montreal on Monday also etches a way forward to create an open-access platform for sharing gene sequences (digital sequence information) as part of new benefit-sharing arrangements. But some observers worry these policy advances still aren’t keeping up with […] Continue reading ->
A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme warns that investment in nature-based solutions must double by 2025 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5°C, as well as halting biodiversity loss and progressively increasing land degradation. The report comes a week before world leaders will gather at the UN Biodiversity Conference […] Continue reading ->
In 2020, UNICEF estimated that “a stillbirth occurs every 16 seconds somewhere in the world.” A new study has linked air pollution to nearly half of them. The study of 137 countries is the first global analysis to assess the number of fetal deaths, putting into numbers the already documented link between fine particulate matter […] Continue reading ->