One year after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake wracked Türkiye and Syria, some 690,000 people remain displaced in southern Türkiye, out of the 3 million people that initially lost their homes when the natural disaster hit in the early morning of 6 February 2023. Another 40,000 Syrians remain internally displaced mainly in the northern region of […] Continue reading ->
“Tobacco [is] the biggest public health threat the world has ever faced. […] Together we have made great progress. We have saved lives,” the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated at the opening of the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) on the Framework Convention Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Panama on […] Continue reading ->
Europe’s Health Emergency Response Agency (HERA) has pledged €6 million to assist the Africa Centre for Disease Control (ACDC) to scale up sequence-based disease surveillance and laboratory capacity on the continent. This was announced by Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, at the start of a three-day meeting between the African […] Continue reading ->
World leaders have a duty to deliver “an effective, legally-binding pandemic accord” by May to prevent the devastation wrought by COVID-19, according to a group of influential leaders and organisations. The call came in an open letter issued on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global emergency, and was signed by The […] Continue reading ->
The African region is accelerating the implementation of the global roadmap for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and 10 countries have eliminated at least one NTD since 2021, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa told the body’s executive board last week. Togo eliminated four NTD, while Egypt eliminated lymphatic filariasis and […] Continue reading ->
WHO Executive Board delegates on Thursday gave the green light to a draft proposal by Switzerland cementing the framework for a new WHO “Health for Peace” initiative. The move marked a bright spot in a day otherwise marked by heated debates over regional conflicts, including Gaza and Ukraine. The Health and Peace initiative was first […] Continue reading ->
Discussion about non-communicable diseases (NCDs) opened a Pandora’s Box of problems at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) executive board meeting on Wednesday. Not a single country is on track to achieve all nine voluntary global NCD targets for 2025, according to the Director-General’s report, which appealed to member countries for input on how they can […] Continue reading ->
WHO has released a novel set of guidelines on the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) in large multi-modal models (LMMs), a type of generative AI frequently used in healthcare. The guidelines include 40 recommendations for governments as well as other actors, such as technology companies and health care providers. Based on 2021 WHO […] Continue reading ->
The final hours of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday saw the launch of a new Global Alliance for Women’s Health which has the broad ambition of, “re-shaping the future of women’s health and the global economy.” So far 42 organizations have expressed interest in joining the alliance, including government leaders and representatives from […] Continue reading ->
“It’s not just about people with disabilities, this is about all of us,” stresses Pascal Bijleveld, the CEO of ATscale Global Partnership, an organization established in 2018 to advocate for assistive technologies (AT) access, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The first-ever global campaign to expand access, ‘Unlock the Everyday’, was launched on Tuesday at […] Continue reading ->