A new 10-point proposal by the World Health Organization’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for improving preparedness and response to health emergencies received mixed reviews from WHO member states in Monday’s opening session of this week’s Executive Board (EB) meeting, the agency’s 34-member governing body. It was the first substantive issue to be tackled […] Continue reading ->
A briefing series on the status of moves to reform the global system of pandemic preparedness and response launches today, just ahead of the WHO Executive Board review of progress next week. Looking back at 2022 and forward into 2023, this series by the Global Health Center of the Geneva Graduate Institute, published in collaboration […] Continue reading ->
Proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR) focus on improving accountability and compliance, according to Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Speaking at the start of last week’s meeting of the IHR review committee, Tedros said that he expected a report from the committee, which is considering the amendments, by […] Continue reading ->
British scientists have launched a new initiative to expand the sequencing of common seasonal respiratory viruses with the aim of developing an early warning system for new viral threats and help prevent future pandemics. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, labs around the world were sequencing tens of thousands of Sars-CoV-2 genomes a day. […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of the COVID pandemic, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Israel’s largest medical center, Sheba Medical Center, are launching a scientific collaboration aimed at identifying emerging disease threats in the region. One of the first projects planned will be a study examining the impacts on antibody defenses amongst travelers from […] Continue reading ->
As nations clamp down on travellers from China during an Omicron surge there Chinese health experts have told the World Health Organization that two known Omicron lineages are dominating the current Chinese surge, with BA.5.2 and BF.7 together accounting for 97.5% of all locally-acquired infections. The data was contained in a report by WHO’s Technical Advisory […] Continue reading ->
When it becomes fully operational, the AMA will complement the Africa CDC especially in the area of pandemic preparedness. KIGALI, Rwanda – Advocates for the African Medicines Agency called on the African Union (AU) and its 55 member countries to speed up efforts to establish the African Medicines Agency (AMA), saying it will strengthen the […] Continue reading ->
There are emerging hopes that sometime in 2023, WHO can declare that the COVID-19 global health emergency is over, said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a pre-holiday press briefing on Wednesday. Meanwhile, however, the world continues to invest some $2 trillion in wars and “killing each other” – but not nearly […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has pushed back on media reports that its board has decided to end COVID vaccine support for 37 middle-income countries next year – and end altogether the dedicated COVAX vaccine facility, supplying free vaccines to some 92 low- and middle-income countries, in 2024. A high-ranking official at Gavi told Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. […] Continue reading ->