The Tenth Conference of Parties (COP10) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) sidestepped a controversial debate on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products – effectively kicking the can on any decisions related to regulation of that swelling market to the next meeting in two years time. However, the parties at the conference, […] Continue reading ->
One year after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake wracked Türkiye and Syria, some 690,000 people remain displaced in southern Türkiye, out of the 3 million people that initially lost their homes when the natural disaster hit in the early morning of 6 February 2023. Another 40,000 Syrians remain internally displaced mainly in the northern region of […] Continue reading ->
Families of Israel’s Female Hostages Plead for Deeper Intervention by WHO and UN Officials in Geneva
Shay Dickmann stood stoically as the recorded screams of a woman pierced the darkness of the sealed metal container, followed by shouting and screams, the sounds of gunshots and a baby crying. A narrow tunnel led to a tiny room with a single lightbulb and a dirty mattress on the floor. On the wall, a […] Continue reading ->
Europe’s Health Emergency Response Agency (HERA) has pledged €6 million to assist the Africa Centre for Disease Control (ACDC) to scale up sequence-based disease surveillance and laboratory capacity on the continent. This was announced by Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, at the start of a three-day meeting between the African […] 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 ->
World leaders have a duty to deliver “an effective, legally-binding pandemic accord” by May to prevent the devastation wrought by COVID-19, according to a group of influential leaders and organisations. The call came in an open letter issued on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global emergency, and was signed by The […] Continue reading ->
Poland on Thursday suggested that it might be better to delay the approval of a new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic accord, beyond the planned May 2024 deadline – so as to get to an “ambitious, clear and consistent” agreement. The Polish trial balloon seemed to break ranks with the drumbeat of recent statements by […] 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 ->
A week long meeting of WHO’s Executive Board kicked off on Monday with plans for a fresh WHO multi-year strategy, a new “Investment Fund” to help finance it – and a warning by Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom that he was “gravely concerned” that WHO member states would fail to adopt a global pandemic accord […] Continue reading ->
WHO has released a novel set of guidelines on the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) in large multi-modal models (LMMs), a type of generative AI frequently used in healthcare. The guidelines include 40 recommendations for governments as well as other actors, such as technology companies and health care providers. Based on 2021 WHO […] Continue reading ->