The world can achieve the global health goals of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 only if it makes focussed investments into health innovation in the coming years. This was a key message from parliamentarians and representatives of the global health agency, UNITAID, at a panel on “Achieving the Global Health Targets Through Equitable Access to […] Continue reading ->
A four-year-old asthmatic girl from Ukraine was forced to relocate to a gas station earlier this week where she could connect her ventilator, after a Russian missile attack cut off her city’s electricity supply, leaving her without any other means of receiving life-saving oxygen. Pictures of her frightened, frozen eyes made social media. But according […] Continue reading ->
Digitalization of health services and systems needs to be approached holistically, and take a rights-based approach to services that makes access more equitable, not less so. These were two themes that emerged at a session on ditigal health as an enabler of universal health coverage at the UNITE Global Summit 2022, In Lisbon, Portugal this […] Continue reading ->
This year, “Equalise” was chosen as the slogan for World AIDS day, observed 1 December. The theme is a call to action around the need to address the injustices that are fuelling the AIDS epidemic as pre-existing inequalities are exacerbated by the serious disruptions to health systems caused by the Ukraine war, COVID-19 pandemic and […] Continue reading ->
A New York lawmaker warned fellow parliamentarians on Wednesday to “stay as far away from the private sector as you can” when it comes to healthcare. “The main issue in the United States is that healthcare is commodified,” said New York State Senator Jose Gustavo Rivera. “It is true, the best healthcare is available in […] Continue reading ->
A group of African parliamentarians raised a red flag on Tuesday at the UNITE Global Summit when they told representatives that they felt neglected by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which funds billions of dollars of health services in their countries. “Do African parliamentarians only get involved when we have to […] 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 ->
Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at […] Continue reading ->
“Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19 was a “global stress test” for parliamentarians, whose job is to propose policies, said Kelvin Yil Lee Wuen, a parliamentarian from Malaysia. Speaking Monday at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, the MP proposed five global policy recommendations, which he said his own country had adopted. 1 – Create conducive policies and infrastructure to […] Continue reading ->