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 ->
Along with a pledge to conserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity, the sweeping new deal reached in Montreal on Monday also etches a way forward to create an open-access platform for sharing gene sequences (digital sequence information) as part of new benefit-sharing arrangements. But some observers worry these policy advances still aren’t keeping up with […] Continue reading ->
Spending on health increased worldwide by 6% on average in real terms in the year 2020, according to the World Health Organization’s latest global review of health finance. The analysis found that global spending on health reached US$ 9 trillion in 2020, or 10.8% of global gross domestic product (GDP), but remains highly unequal across […] Continue reading ->
In 2020, UNICEF estimated that “a stillbirth occurs every 16 seconds somewhere in the world.” A new study has linked air pollution to nearly half of them. The study of 137 countries is the first global analysis to assess the number of fetal deaths, putting into numbers the already documented link between fine particulate matter […] Continue reading ->
Although India’s Supreme Court issued a landmark decision granting all women the right to an abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy in late September, many obstacles stand in the way of women getting abortions – including the conservative attitudes of health workers towards unmarried women. The Supreme Court decision erased the difference between married […] Continue reading ->
Women and girls are more at risk of getting killed at home by intimate partners or family. A new report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) said that more than five women or girls are killed every hour across the world by their partners or families. The report, released […] Continue reading ->
SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT – Ken Henshaw’s story of his Niger Delta community’s experience with fossil fuel extraction reads like the fallout from a war zone without the ready presence of international media to document the devastation. Henshaw lives at ground zero of one of Africa’s earliest and longest-running experiences with oil extraction, a six […] Continue reading ->
NEW DELHI – Govind Ram is still waiting to get justice for the death of his daughter in 2019 – who allegedly died from contaminated cough syrup. In December 2019, Ram’s two-year-old, Surabhi, had a fever and chest congestion. Ram, a labourer in the Udhampur district of India’s Jammu and Kashmir region, took his daughter […] Continue reading ->
BERLIN – If a new treaty that rewrites the global rules for pandemic response is really approved by the World Health Assembly by May 2024, as planned, that will still only be the beginning of the journey. The new international accord will still have to be ratified by a critical mass of WHO´s 194 member […] Continue reading ->
The Indian government has halted the Maiden Pharmaceuticals plant that produced the cough and cold syrups that WHO says were tainted with toxic chemicals – possibly linked to the recent deaths of some 66 children in The Gambia. A senior WHO official confirmed that Indian government health authorities had shut down the plant after WHO […] Continue reading ->