Against the background of increased cross-border infection risks, the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) – a decision that may help increase aid flows to the disease epicentre but also threaten free-wheeling patterns of […] Continue reading ->
An estimated 820 million people went hungry in 2018, the third continuous year in a worldwide trend of rising hunger. And over one-quarter of the world’s population, or 2 billion people in all, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, according to the The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report for 2019. […] Continue reading ->
Nairobi, Kenya – The World Health Organization has commended efforts by the government of Uganda for keeping the deadly Ebola virus from spreading eastwards into the country from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a prolonged outbreak has claimed approximately 1,600 lives since last August. The East African country has recorded only three […] Continue reading ->
The proportion of the world’s population using safely managed sanitation services increased from 28-45% between 2000 and 2017, according to the latest joint report of the World Health Organization and UNICEF on Progress in Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. However, huge service gaps still remain, with 4.2 billion people worldwide still lacking access to […] Continue reading ->
Following the adoption of the World Health Assembly resolution on the transparency of medicines markets last month, a new civil society group has formed in France to monitor the French government’s implementation of the resolution. L’Observatoire Transparence Médicaments (Drug Transparency Observatory), was launched today in a statement calling on the French government and all countries […] Continue reading ->
In what should prove reassuring to many women, a large clinical study in four African countries has found no significant difference in the risk of HIV infection among women using progestogen-based hormones or copper-bearing IUDs as contraception. However with “unacceptably high” rates of HIV infection among users of both contraceptive modes during the study, adoption […] Continue reading ->