The World Health Assembly opened its annual meeting of member states Sunday on a celebratory note marking the 75th anniversary of the World Health Organization’s foundation in 1948. Eradicating smallpox, eliminating polio in most countries worldwide, and dramatic reductions in deaths from once-deadly childhood diseases preventable by clean water, basic medicines and vaccines are among […] Continue reading ->
Civil society is unlikely to be included in the World Health Organization (WHO)’s pandemic accord negotiations and should focus on making an impact on its content, according to a  European Union official. “I don’t see these rules.. changing very easily at this stage. So I would concentrate efforts in working on the substance more than […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has ended the global health emergency for mpox, marking the end of a 10-month juggling act by the UN health agency as it scrambled to deal with concurrent global pandemics.  The announcement arrives just days after WHO declared the end of the global health emergency for COVID-19 last Friday, three […] Continue reading ->
The global response to COVID-19 failed people in developing countries, women and health workers and must never be repeated, non-state actors told a meeting hosted by the United Nations (UN) in New York on Tuesday. The UN convened the four-hour multi-stakeholder meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR) in preparation for a High-Level Meeting […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations (UN) is hosting three multi-stakeholder meetings in New York on Monday and Tuesday on tuberculosis, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR) and universal health coverage (UHC). They are aimed at getting the views of non-state actors in preparation for UN High-Level meetings in September, starting with pandemic preparedness on 20 September, followed […] Continue reading ->
Equity and intellectual property (IP) rights are – unsurprisingly – the most important and trickiest issues facing countries negotiating the terms on which the next global pandemic will be addressed. This emerged at a World Health Organization (WHO) briefing on Thursday addressed by Precious Matsoso, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) crafting a pandemic […] Continue reading ->
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first-ever vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The single-shot vaccine intended for use in adults aged 60 or older represents the culmination of six decades of research to protect the world from RSV. With the green light from the FDA on Wednesday, GSK’s Arexvy vaccine […] Continue reading ->
CEOs from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies issued a call to G7 leaders on Friday to oppose the inclusion of intellectual property rights waivers and pathogen benefit sharing in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic treaty.  In meetings with Japanese Prime Minister and chair of next month’s G7 summit Fumio Kishida this week, a delegation […] Continue reading ->
International NGOs and activists have called out the US for siding with China to exclude the public from seeing drafts of the pandemic accord as it is being negotiated by World Health Organization (WHO) member states. “The attempt to create a veil of secrecy now surrounding the substantive and technical text-based negotiations on the WHO […] Continue reading ->