Reform and diversification of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) funding model is vital if the global health body is to avoid repeating the consequences of the US’s withdrawal in April 2020, member states have said during WHO’s Executive Board meetings. The global COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the “open secret” within the field of global health […] Continue reading ->
Five people have died in a major fire at the Serum Institute’s manufacturing facility, charged with producing India’s supply of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine –  just days after the country’s national vaccine campaign got underway. Serum Institute Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla was quick to say that the fire at its main complex in Pune, would not […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – Scientists are concerned that antibodies that could detect SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa’s first wave will be less effective against a virus variant that first emerged here and is known as 501Y.V2.  What’s worse, they still don’t know if brand new COVID-19 vaccines will work against the variant – which is deemed to […] Continue reading ->
In a brief, but historic speech Thursday morning before WHO’s Executive Board, President Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor, Dr Anthony Fauci, reversed course on four years erratic and often hostile approaches to the World Health Organization and global health – which had alienated and bewildered friends and allies worldwide. .  As one of the first […] Continue reading ->
Right after the pomp and ceremony of the heavily guarded inauguration of new US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris is over, a deadly serious new war on COVID-19 is due to get underway –  including rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of the new Administration’s seven point COVID pandemic plan.  That […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) response to COVID-19 was too slow, hampered by an antiquated pandemic alert system, lack of resources and a lack of authority with member states, according to an interim report by the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response, presented to the WHO’s Executive Board meeting on Tuesday. It took the […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 vaccine access platform, COVAX, is geared up to deliver vaccines to “far more” than 20% of member states’ populations beyond 2021, Dr Kate O’Brien, the body’s director of vaccines, told its Executive Board meeting on Tuesday. She was responding to concerns and criticisms expressed by member states at the […] Continue reading ->
The world is “on the brink of a catastrophe and moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with the lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” declared WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his harshest rebuke to date of both countries and the pharma industry for failing […] Continue reading ->