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 ->
As we approach the final months of member-state negotiations over a World Health Organization Pandemic Accord, due to come before the World Health Assembly in May, the efforts to forge a consensus have witnessed modest progress. However, the original divide between developed and developing countries on key issues such as finance, access and benefit sharing, […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19 vaccines reduced deaths due to the pandemic by at least 57%, saving more than 1.4 million lives in the WHO European Region between December 2020 and March 2023, according to a report published in medRxiv, a pre-print platform for health sciences, on Tuesday. Most of the lives saved were those of people aged 60 […] Continue reading ->
Days after government officials took a break from frenetic pandemic accord negotiations, news broke that European countries had destroyed at least 215 million unwanted COVID-19 vaccine doses valued at over €4 billion. The 19 countries surveyed dumped 0.7 doses per resident – with Estonia and Germany being the most wasteful, according to Politico, which broke […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of COP28, WHO will press ahead with calls for fossil fuel phase out, stepped up commitments for health sector decarbonization, and a new resolution on Climate and Health, set to go before the World Health Assembly in May 2024. Those were key takeaways from an end-year WHO global press briefing by WHO […] Continue reading ->
This is a bumper week for pandemic negotiations – the last formal set for the year – with meetings of both the World Health Organization’s (WHO) intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) and the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR). The INB, which is negotiating a pandemic agreement, meets until Wednesday, while the […] Continue reading ->
At the start of the seventh round of negotiations on a pandemic agreement on Monday, a number of European countries asserted that any changes to intellectual property (IP) rights should be thrashed out at the World Trade Organization (WTO) – not the World Health Organization (WHO). IP rights are one of the most controversial aspects […] Continue reading ->
Time-bound waivers of intellectual property (IP) rights and benefits for countries that share information about threatening pathogens are some of the key components of the draft pandemic accord sent to World Health Organization (WHO) member states by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on Monday. These two issues have been major bones of contention in negotiations and […] Continue reading ->
BERLIN – The health and humanitarian crisis triggered by Hamas attacks on Israeli towns and villages a week ago took center stage at the opening of the World Health Summit (WHS) on Sunday evening, drawing sharp remarks by German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach who denounced the “barbaric” Hamas attacks, 7 October, which led to the […] Continue reading ->