More than 300 health facilities have been destroyed or flooded in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique in the wake of Cyclone Freddy, WHO estimates. That has left hundreds of communities without adequate access to health services even as the cyclone’s double whammy of devastation has raised public health risks including the increased spread of cholera, […] 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 ->
DAMASCUS/JABLEH – One week on from last week’s massive earthquakes, ordinary people across Syria – including in the large parts controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces – have been scrambling to marshal whatever help they can for survivors, offering up their homes, supplies, and skills. While many of the areas al-Assad controls are further from […] 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 ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) triggered its “no regrets” policy at an emergency meeting on Tuesday in response to the earthquakes that devastated Turkey and Syria this week, while promising long-term aid to the affected regions after the period of emergency response ends. The policy – which says that in unpredictable crises, WHO should err […] 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 ->
A four-year-old asthmatic girl from Ukraine was forced to relocate to a gas station earlier this week where she could connect her ventilator, after a Russian missile attack cut off her city’s electricity supply, leaving her without any other means of receiving life-saving oxygen. Pictures of her frightened, frozen eyes made social media. But according […] Continue reading ->
“Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called […] Continue reading ->
Women and girls are more at risk of getting killed at home by intimate partners or family. A new report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) said that more than five women or girls are killed every hour across the world by their partners or families. The report, released […] Continue reading ->
As the first snows fall across Ukraine, World Health Organization officials in Kyiv warn the coming winter will be “life-threatening for millions” of Ukrainians. At a press conference in Kyiv on Monday, WHO’s European Regional Director Dr Hans Kluge called the Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy and medical infrastructure “the largest attack on health care […] Continue reading ->