Sudden fever, a severe cough and acute respiratory distress are the familiar onset symptoms of seasonal flu, which has affected WHO’s European Region with unusual intensity and speed this year. As the Northern Hemisphere enters winter, health systems are struggling to manage an epidemic driven by an aggressive, genetically mutated influenza strain A(H3N2) subclade K. […] Continue reading ->
Two more senior WHO officials, Bruce Aylward and Ailan Li, who were among those dropped from WHO’s Senior Leadership Team during the first phase of an Agency shake-up, have now been appointed to leading roles elsewhere in the organisation, according to a memo from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Li, a Chinese national and […] Continue reading ->
Global leaders pledged US$ 1.9 billion to advance polio eradication on Monday, including a new $1.2 billion commitment by the Gates Foundation. The pledges, made on the margins of Abu Dhabi Finance Week, reduce the remaining budget gap for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s (GPEI) to just $440 million through 2029. That’s in comparison by […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has pared down its staff in its Geneva headquarters, Washington DC and New York by 33% – from 643 to 440 people, the agency confirmed today, following a June replenishment drive that fell about $2 billion short of a $11.9 billion fundraising goal for 2026-2030. Beginning in 2026, the agency will […] Continue reading ->
First-ever WHO guidelines recommending the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) therapies for the treatment of obesity in adults has been issued by the World Health Organization – in what the global health agency said is a “conditional” sign of approval for the cutting edge medications that have become widely popular. The new WHO recommendations go […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is transferring the majority of its Geneva jobs to Rome, in the latest wave of upheaval to hit the city and longtime global health hub, as UN agencies scramble to respond to international aid cuts and save money. A UNICEF spokeperson confirmed on Friday that some 290 jobs would […] Continue reading ->
Technological advances in Artificial Intelligence applications for healthcare are quickly outpacing regulatory and ethical safeguards, creating a dangerous gap in patient safety, warns a milestone report on AI in Health Systems, published Wednesday by the World Health Organization’s European Region (WHO/EURO). Paradoxically, the WHO’s urgent call for tighter AI regulation coincided with a far-reaching European […] Continue reading ->
WHO will have terminated, retired or separated by agreement an estimated 2371 staff worldwide by mid-2026 – shedding about 25% of a workforce that numbered 9,457 in December 2024 – a 15-year peak. That’s according to a new report that is to be presented and discussed with WHO member states on Wednesday. Despite the huge […] Continue reading ->
GENEVA – Global health leaders are calling for robust new measures to combat the use of tobacco and related products, including restrictions on flavours to curb the surge in e-cigarettes use in adolescents and filter bans to protect the environment. These and other proposals will be debated over the next two weeks as over 1,400 […] Continue reading ->
“Inadequate” and “unbalanced” were some of the complaints levelled against the first draft of a Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system when World Health Organization (WHO) member states met for text-based negotiations in Geneva on Monday. Once agreed, the PABS system will be an annex to the Pandemic Agreement, but several member states at the Intergovernmental […] Continue reading ->