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 ->
WHO has stepped up its counteroffensive against tobacco companies that market cigarettes and other tobacco products to teens – with the release of a new set of guidance for school-based anti-smoking policies.  The guidance, “Freedom from Tobacco and Nicotine: Guide for Schools,” and “Nicotine- and Tobacco-free School Implementation Toolkit”, aims to support school policies banning […] Continue reading ->
Some 300 million people have been protected from becoming smokers in the 15 years since WHO launched the ‘MPOWER’ package of recommended policies for reducing smoking prevalence in countries worldwide, declared Kelly Henning, of Bloomberg Philanthropies, at a press conference in Geneva this week.  She was speaking at a WHO briefing launching the 2023 WHO […] Continue reading ->
In groundbreaking new research, experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have raised a cautious red flag about the artificial sweetener, aspartame, and its link to liver cancer, but stress that evidence is “limited”. IARC’s Dr Mary Schubauer-Berigan described the artificial sweetener as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” based on “limited evidence” of […] Continue reading ->