Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are moving to centre stage in global health financing, driven by collapsing bilateral aid and political momentum from initiatives like the Accra Reset. Experts see the shift as an opportunity to deliver the predictable, large-scale investment needed to strengthen domestic health systems, provided governments and lenders can ensure transparent terms that […] Continue reading ->
A painkiller designed by artificial intelligence that beat morphine in animal tests; a “biological age” score on a government app. Smart-ring makers fighting each other in court while signing deals with the same health department. At its Future Health Summit, Abu Dhabi showed how hard it is to bet on the business of ageing, and […] Continue reading ->
The pledge to triple climate adaptation funding hammered out in the closing hours of last year’s UN climate summit in Brazil would still leave developing countries with less than a third of the money they need to protect people from deadly heat, rising seas, failing harvests and other mounting threats from the climate crisis. The […] Continue reading ->
WHO has greenlighted Phase 2/3 trials for two brand new vaccine candidates that specifically target the Ebola Bundibugyo virus species ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo. Actual trials could forseeably commence “within three to four weeks” – as soon as DRC regulators issue their own approval, said WHO’s Science Director Meg Doherty, at a Wednesday […] Continue reading ->
Scaling up six climate and health measures worldwide could prevent 1.6 million deaths a year and generate $3.9 trillion in economic benefits annually, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, days before the COP31 climate talks open in Antalya, Türkiye. Five of the six measures, from improved heat-health warning systems to cleaner household fuels, […] Continue reading ->
One in every four of all adolescents worldwide are getting less than an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) study. This translates to around 240 million young people between the ages of 11-17 who are not getting the critical exercise needed to develop into […] Continue reading ->
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 ->