GENEVA – Despite pushback Monday from many WHO member states, including the 47-member ‘Africa Group’, Loyce Pace, US Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services remains “hopeful we may reach consensus” on reforming international health emergency rules at the World Health Assembly this week.  The proposal backed by Australia, […] Continue reading ->
More stable funding for WHO, but only incremental progress on reforms in global pandemic response are expected out of the upcoming World Health Assembly, where member states also will debate and discuss over two dozen other critical health issues that don’t always make the headlines.   The 75th World Health Assembly, WHO’s annual meeting of member […] Continue reading ->
The past 10 days have seen a flurry of new US initiatives to meet the World Health Organizations target of vaccinating 70% of the global population – including a new Global Action Plan; involvement of PEPFAR networks to strengthen health system response; and most recently, a special US thrust in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation. […] Continue reading ->
The United States will support Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a second term as head of the World Health Organization – a move that is largely symbolic insofar as Tedros is running unopposed in the elections, scheduled for the 75th World Health Assembly, 22-28 May.  Although over a dozen countries in Europe and elsewhere lined […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of the chaotic, and often failed, global response to the COVID pandemic, the United States is not waiting for an elaborate international treaty or convention on future pandemics, which will take years to negotiate.  Instead, Washington wants to fast track a series of nitty-gritty, but far- reaching changes in the existing International […] Continue reading ->
ISLAMABAD – The timing couldn’t have been worse.  On the same day that Bill Gates, completed his maiden visit to Pakistan to cheer on the country’s progress towards polio eradication, WHO and Malawi health authorities announced that a small child thousands of kilometers away in Malawi had been ill with polio – infected by a […] Continue reading ->
As the 150th Executive Board Meeting of the WHO closed Saturday, attention focused on the inability of the WHO governing board to reach consensus on critical issues that it had debated – including a more sustainable financing framework as well as a clear way forward on a proposed new pandemic legal accord, reforms of global […] Continue reading ->
China wants to delete language supporting rapid World Health Organization (WHO) access to outbreak sites in future pandemics from a critical document that maps out a way forward in future pandemics, a diplomatic source has told Health Policy Watch. This emerged at Monday’s start of a three-day meeting in Geneva of the global body’s Working […] Continue reading ->