In the wake of an abuse scandal that led to the removal of its regional director, WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office on Friday announced a series of new measures to combat abusive behaviour and sexual exploitation among the region’s over 600 staff. Last March, in an unprecedented move, some countries in the 37-member region voted […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) is busy electing new leaders in three of its six regions. Previous articles have considered the issues at stake and the candidates competing for the position of regional director in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) and the South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO). This article, the final one in the […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, explicitly excluded the world’s five largest emitters of greenhouse gasses – China, the United States, Russia, India and Japan – from his Climate Ambition Summit, held Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The United Kingdom, another major polluter, was notably absent from the summit, amid reports […] Continue reading ->
The burgeoning health issues of small island developing states – which are on the front lines of climate change, but also awash in handguns and ultra-processed food imports – is the focus of a high level ministerial meeting taking place in the Caribbean island of Barbados today and tomorrow. The SIDS Ministerial Conference on NCDs […] Continue reading ->
Eight more countries in the global south have dangerously low numbers of healthcare workers in the wake of the COVID pandemic, a new WHO report has found. The World Health Organization’s 2023 report on “Health workforce support and safeguards” found that some 55 countries now rank below the global median in terms of their density […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization on Wednesday said it is terminating the contract of the Director for the agency’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO), following a prolonged investigation of allegations of abusive conduct towards his staff. The terse WHO announcement came at the conclusion of a two-day special session of the WHO Executive Board, tasked with […] Continue reading ->
WHO’s Executive Board is set to meet again next week in a special closed session to consider the fate of the Regional Director of WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO), who has been accused of racism and harassment of staff at the Manila-based office. In a meeting earlier this week, WHO member states from the […] Continue reading ->
By the time you finish reading this article, at least two women will have died from complications in pregnancy or childbirth. In the next 24 hours, another 798 will lose their lives. Nearly all of these women will be from low-and lower middle-income countries, and nearly all of their deaths will have been preventable. These […] Continue reading ->
South Korea became the first country in the world to achieve the highest level, “maturity level 4” (ML4), in regulating medicines and vaccines. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) in the Republic of Korea is the only national regulatory authority to be recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have advanced oversight […] Continue reading ->
Authorities in China’s southwestern city of Chengdu are sticking to the nation’s “zero-COVID” policy demanding a lockdown on the city’s 21 million inhabitants even in the face of a major earthquake that has killed at least 66 people in the region. Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province, has been beset by a heatwave and […] Continue reading ->