Low-and-middle-income countries have made significantly less progress than high-income countries in implementing hand hygiene and infection prevention programmes that can stop deadly diseases, from diarrhoea to COVID-19, according to a recent A World Health Organization survey of 88 countries.  And one in four health care facilities in poorer countries do not have basic water services […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization and the German government on Wednesday announced the launch of a new Global Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence that aims to harness the world of big data, media and epidemiological reports to more rapidly identify and respond to emerging disease risks.   The hub, to be launched in Berlin later this […] Continue reading ->
“If we could participate in the WHO and World Health Assembly (WHA), the warning messages we would give to the organisation would receive more weight, and this would probably result in better responsive actions.”  – Taiwan Health Minister Shih-Chung Chen Arguably, Taiwan has been repeating this statement  for decades. Yet when Chen’s mild words are […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, has secured half a billion doses of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine for the COVAX global vaccine facility in a landmark agreement that will deepen vaccination coverage in poor countries around the world, Gavi said on Monday. Meanwhile, Sweden announced that it will donate one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the […] Continue reading ->
A new appeal about the course of the SARS-CoV2 virus hunt, penned by an international group of scientists, urges WHO member states to seize the moment of the upcoming World Health Assembly to adopt a much tougher mandate, with more rigorous scientific measures, to get to the truth of whether the SARS-CoV2 virus first infected […] Continue reading ->