The World Health Organization’s (WHO) working group has failed to meet its deadline of Friday (26 April) for amending the rules governing global disease outbreaks – the International Health Regulations (IHR) – and will reconvene. This emerged late afternoon on Friday (26 April) at a briefing after the week-long Working Group of Amendments to […] Continue reading ->
“This is probably the most hopeful time in my professional life and the scariest time,” Dr Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization (WHO) Deputy Director General and head of Health Emergencies, told a high-level Geneva audience on Wednesday. “Hopeful” because there is the possibility of reaching a global agreement on how to tackle future pandemics […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a new network, CoViNet, aimed at identifying, monitoring, and evaluating SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, and emerging coronaviruses that pose significant public health risks. The program expands on the WHO COVID-19 reference laboratory network, established in January 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. Originally, the network’s primary goal was […] Continue reading ->
As pressure intensifies on World Health Organization (WHO) member states to finalise a pandemic agreement by May, insiders are concerned by the snails’ pace of negotiations – primarily because they believe the negotiators have spent an inordinate amount of time on contentious issues while neglecting more procedural issues. After two years of negotiations, the eighth […] Continue reading ->
With only 10 official negotiating days left, the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR) is under pressure to reach agreement on changes to the rules that govern global health emergencies. The seventh WGIHR meeting which began on Monday officially kicked off the 2024 pandemic ‘season’ negotiations at the World Health Organization […] Continue reading ->
Misinformation, waning interest and entrenched positions threaten the World Health Organization’s (WHO) two pandemic-related negotiations aimed at strengthening future pandemic responses, according to a briefing given to the WHO executive board meeting on Monday. Draft agreements from the two processes – to establish a pandemic accord and to update the International Health Regulations (IHR) – […] Continue reading ->