It’s a cold winter morning in Davos, but the pictures on the screen are aglow with warmth – a 100-year-old man cuddling an infant; ancient women with faces wrinkled in laughter; aged men sharing a flask of local red wine; and an extended family gathered around a Mediterranean meal of chickpeas, cheeses, salads and seafood. […] Continue reading ->
Almost 40% of global cancer cases could be prevented, according to a new global study from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday. The study attributed some 7.1 million cancer cases in 2022 to 30 “modifiable risk factors”. Tobacco was the leading […] Continue reading ->
Governments should “significantly strengthen” taxes on alcoholic and sugary drinks as these products are getting cheaper, fueling obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers and injuries. This is according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which issued two reports on taxing sugary drinks and alcohol on Tuesday, including how countries are implementing these. “In most countries, these […] Continue reading ->
A US government-funded trial on the timing of hepatitis B vaccinations, which will delay vaccination for up to 7,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau, is due to start this week. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded a controversial Danish research group a $1,6 million five-year grant to study the “optimal timing and […] Continue reading ->
The US Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed a recent finding that atrazine, the second most widely-used herbicide in the United States, is “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization’s cancer review agency. Atrazine is used extensively in the US on crops like corn, sorghum, and sugarcane. However, over 60 countries have banned the […] 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 Eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) concluded in Geneva on Saturday with calls to member states to take stronger action on reducing the environmental harm of tobacco use and increasing corporate liability. But political stand-offs between countries, along with industry interference, hindered major breakthroughs on […] Continue reading ->
From killing over 600,000 elderly from dementia to an almost equal number of infants under the age of one-year, air pollution’s impact on young and old is explained simply through hard-hitting numbers in the latest State of Global Air (SOGA) report, by the Boston-based Health Effects Institute. The report identifies plenty of scope for immediate […] Continue reading ->
BERLIN – Global life expectancy rose again in 2023 after a decline during the COVID pandemic with overall life expectancy 20 years higher as compared to 1950. But North America and Latin America are seeing higher death rates among adolescents and young adults due to a crisis in mental health – reflected in higher rates […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK – Although chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) are the third leading cause of death globally, there remains a ‘mismatch’ between impact and action, said a group of global health leaders and experts on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly. “There is a mismatch between the disease [impact] from CRD and the action against […] Continue reading ->