The number of people facing hunger in Sudan has doubled over the past year, with nearly over 42% of the country’s 46 million people facing high levels of food insecurity, a senior Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in the country said Friday. “The food situation in the country is deeply alarming,” Adam Yao, FAO […] Continue reading ->
While July saw a crush of global pandemic-related meetings – some joint and some clashing – to accommodate tight schedules and northern summer holidays, achieving a pandemic-proof world is still a long way off. The two pandemic negotiations underway at the World Health Organization (WHO) have held individual and joint meetings over the past few […] Continue reading ->
The thorny and unresolved issues of how to incorporate health equity measures and supportive finance for low and middle income countries into revisions of the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR), are set to be two key items on the agenda of an IHR negotiating body when talks resume again in early October. This was one […] Continue reading ->
Thirty-seven countries have received grants worth $338 million from the Pandemic Fund to boost their resilience to pandemics in the first round of the fund’s disbursements. Three disbursements involve multi-country grants: to 12 Caribbean countries to strengthen their early warning surveillance, build laboratory systems and workforce development; to seven Latin American countries to engage communities […] Continue reading ->
The worst outcome of the two World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic negotiations currently underway would be the adoption of contradictory definitions and processes, warned Dr Mike Ryan, the head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday. “At the very minimum, the two instruments will need to be very aligned on the […] Continue reading ->
With the fate and nature of the pandemic accord currently being negotiated by World Health Organization (WHO) member states still uncertain, global health experts are calling for “realistic” backup plans to protect the world against the next pandemic. “We need an ambitious but implementable pandemic accord – that is the Holy Grail,” Javier Guzman, Director […] Continue reading ->
With the sixth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) meeting to develop a pandemic accord currently underway in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief minced no words when he slammed “groups with vested interests” for trying to sabotage the negotiations. “Twenty years ago, the tobacco industry tried to undermine negotiations on the WHO […] Continue reading ->
Routine childhood immuniaztions rebounded in 2022 from the set-backs of the COVID pandemic. But coverage still fell short of pre-COVID numbers in 2019, with 20.5 million children missing out on one or more routine vaccines last year as compared to 18.4 million in 2019. The new data is contained in a report published jointly Tuesday […] Continue reading ->
Pandemic accord negotiations resumed on Monday with World Health Organization (WHO) member states expressing a hunger for text-based talks to begin on a first draft amid grave concerns about whether enough progress will be made before the northern hemisphere summer break. Roland Driece, co-chair of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), told the […] Continue reading ->
African leaders must take the lead in the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases, invest in their control and elimination, and foster cross-border collaboration to achieve the goal of eliminating NTDs as public health concerns by 2030. Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) continue to pose a significant threat to the health and well-being of millions of people […] Continue reading ->