Two final – and likely sleepless – weeks of negotiation on the pandemic agreement begin on Monday, and negotiators have been urged to bring in their principals to ensure speed up decision-making. The negotiations may well be extended but, for now, this ninth meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) is […] Continue reading ->
COPENHAGEN –  In Lebanon, international donors are supporting a network of public primary health care centers to test for diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), offering treatment equally to Lebanese nationals and Syrian refugees who are unlikely to return anytime soon to their war-torn homeland.  In Kenya, a new national insurance law aims to make […] Continue reading ->
COPENHAGEN –  While conflict and natural disasters are usually played out in the media against dramatic scenes of mass casualty response and rescue teams, there’s an iceberg of chronic health conditions that can be even more life threatening and these need far greater attention in emergency response.  That is the theme of a global high […] Continue reading ->
International humanitarian law is clear that “even if health care facilities are being used for military purposes, there are stringent conditions which apply to taking action against them, including a duty to warn and to wait after warning”, said Steven Solomon, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) principal legal officer. “Disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited. All […] Continue reading ->
One year after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake wracked Türkiye and Syria, some 690,000 people  remain displaced in southern Türkiye, out of the 3 million people that initially lost their homes  when the natural disaster hit in the early morning of 6 February 2023.    Another 40,000 Syrians remain internally displaced mainly in the northern region of […] Continue reading ->
An alliance of conservative World Health Organization (WHO) member states and right-wing US organisations has halted the process of granting a reproductive health organisation “official relations” with the global body. Meanwhile, a similar member state grouping objected to the use of “WHO LGBTQI+ community” in a routine human resources report that the Director-General tabled at […] Continue reading ->
The United States described a four-pronged strategy to accelerate the eradication of polio globally at the WHO Executive Board session on poliomyelitis on Thursday. No. 1: Halt circulation in Afghanistan, Pakistan The first action, the U.S. representative said, would be the intensification of efforts to halt the circulation of the wild poliovirus in Afghanistan and […] Continue reading ->