Hanan Balkhy, Saudi Arabia’s candidate for WHO Director General, is especially concerned about antibiotic resistance, the effects of climate change on health, and healthcare in conflict zones. She also warns about a “normalisation” of attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers in conflict regions. As a longtime WHO insider, she is also well aware that the […] Continue reading ->
In the late 1990s, doctors treating sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease spread by tsetse flies that is almost always fatal without treatment, still relied on melarsoprol, an arsenic-based drug that killed roughly one patient in 20. One patient given melarsoprol in 2003 later recalled the injection “felt like fire” being injected into his veins, turning […] Continue reading ->
France’s Ambassador for Global Health, Dr Anne-Claire Amprou, is joining the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) body negotiating the missing piece of the Pandemic Agreement at a crucial moment. Amprou co-chaired the last stage of Pandemic Agreement talks, which eventually found consensus. However, consensus has eluded WHO member states on the pathogen access […] Continue reading ->
Cuts to Medicaid, the health services for low-income Americans, and fewer childhood immunisations – alongside persistent insinuations that vaccines are unsafe – are the most significant health policy changes made by the Trump administration since January 2025. They have been accompanied by reduced food support for low-income families, purges of scientists, and slashed research budgets. […] Continue reading ->
Returning to lead the Global Fund, Mark Dybul argues that the future of global health lies with domestic health systems, not agency mergers in Geneva. Evoking the founding ambition of the early 2000s, the incoming executive director explains how the Accra Reset and US bilateral aid can align under unified national plans – and how […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest alarm level, twice within two years, in 2022 and 2024. But “preventable health emergencies are a sign of failure”, said Helen Clark, co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. “They happen when community health care […] Continue reading ->
Action is lagging far behind the milestone commitments of the 2024 UN High Level Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). But a Ministerial Meeting scheduled for 6-8 December in Abuja offers an opportunity to pick up the baton. Ahead of that, civil society gropus will convene in mid-November in Rome. Two years after the UN General […] Continue reading ->
The destruction of farmland, forests, wilderness and waterways is still outpacing restoration efforts worldwide, which lag far behind 2030 goals. Annual spending on restoration would need to rise more than fourfold, from $64 billion in 2022 to $296 billion by 2030, according to a report released in Yerevan, Armenia, a day before the close of […] Continue reading ->
A decade after the Paris Agreement took effect, climate-related heat, drought, floods, disease and dirty air are killing millions. The authors of a major annual report want the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify the crisis as a health emergency. Climate change has become a global health emergency that needs a new WHO instrument to […] Continue reading ->
Who will steer the World Health Organization through its next chapter? Explore Health Policy Watch’s daily series examining the platforms, records, and institutional hurdles facing each contender for WHO Director-General, continuing today with Gevorg Tamamyan. Access all candidate profiles on our dedicated election site. Dr Gevorg Tamamyan, an Armenian paediatric oncologist and professor at Yerevan […] Continue reading ->