India’s COVID crisis has laid bare the health costs of inadequate access to medical oxygen supplies – faced by many other countries even before India’s pandemic surge began.  Already in February, WHO said that oxygen shortages to treat those seriously ill were impacting more than half a million people in low- and middle-income countries every […] Continue reading ->
KAMPALA – A chorus of human rights organizations, joined by the United Nations, have condemned Uganda’s controversial law that criminalizes same-sex relationships, sex work and imposes mandatory HIV testing on people accused of rape – calling on the east-central African country to amend the law as it would violate human rights standards and undermine public […] Continue reading ->
IBADAN – The US government’s decision to support a temporary waiver on intellectual property related to COVID-19 vaccine patents & other knowhow in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a positive development, said key stakeholders in Africa’s health ecosystem on Thursday.   While US President Joe Biden’s reversal of the previous US position against the waiver […] Continue reading ->
The United States has swung its weight behind a hotly-debated proposal by India and South Africa to suspend intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines for the duration of the pandemic. The dramatic turnabout in the US position, announced Wednesday evening by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, signals a sea change in the balance of powers […] Continue reading ->
“If we could participate in the WHO and World Health Assembly (WHA), the warning messages we would give to the organisation would receive more weight, and this would probably result in better responsive actions.”  – Taiwan Health Minister Shih-Chung Chen Arguably, Taiwan has been repeating this statement  for decades. Yet when Chen’s mild words are […] Continue reading ->
A new appeal about the course of the SARS-CoV2 virus hunt, penned by an international group of scientists, urges WHO member states to seize the moment of the upcoming World Health Assembly to adopt a much tougher mandate, with more rigorous scientific measures, to get to the truth of whether the SARS-CoV2 virus first infected […] Continue reading ->
Several African countries struggling with vaccine rollout programs are forced to donate COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries before the lifesaving drugs expire, the Africa CDC revealed on Thursday. Details of the “donations” are sketchy, but Africa CDC director John Nkengasong, during a media briefing, disclosed how one African country, the Democratic Republic of Congo […] Continue reading ->
While aid is rushed to India, WHO’s Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has called out rich countries to donate more “desperately needed” coronavirus vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean – in the face of persistently high levels of COVID-19 infections in that region, which has consistently been one of the hardest hit by the […] Continue reading ->