Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, board chair of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, on Wednesday was named as the favored candidate to be the next World Trade Organization director-general – after a months-long WTO campaign process and in a decisive moment of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the United States came out in favor of the Republic of Korea’s […] Continue reading ->
It starts with a child bathing in a stream to escape scorching temperatures. Silently, beneath the water, larvae that have emerged from a tiny snail burrow into their leg before entering the bloodstream. Over the next few weeks, the larvae turn into adult worms which mate and produce hundreds of eggs every day. This is […] Continue reading ->
After weeks of inaction, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has signalled that it will create a comprehensive law to halt rice stubble burning in rural areas of northern India, where drifting smoke from thousands of fires is a major contributor to Delhi’s annual autumn air pollution emergencies. But experts remain skeptical, stating that there are […] Continue reading ->
New modes of interagency collaboration triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic should be used as a model to advance more progress, post-pandemic, on important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health, said a group of top international agency leaders in Tuesday’s closing session of the World Health Summit. The three-day summit, which featured 310 speakers at […] Continue reading ->
At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of health systems – digital health technologies are playing a fast-expanding role – showing their revolutionary potential to address old and new needs and gaps, said participants on a Digital Health panel at the World Health Summit on Monday. “COVID-19 is the first pandemic […] Continue reading ->
Spain announced a state of emergency on Sunday and ordered a nationwide curfew just days after becoming the first Western European country to surpass one million confirmed cases. The curfew and restrictions on gatherings of more than six people has made Spain the latest country in Europe to toughen its guidelines, after France placed 46 […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Summit, one of global health’s premier policy conferences got underway today in the shadow of an escalating COVID-19 case surge across Europe. The surge saw WHS sessions shift to an all-virtual platform – after organizers were forced to shelve initial plans for limited in-person participation in Berlin, where the annual conference co-hosted […] Continue reading ->
Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) could play a critical role in decentralising testing and reaching remote communities as WHO launches an Africa roll-out, but a recent study has found that only two of the six RDTs making it to the final round of testing met WHO accuracy standards. RDTs test for proteins produced by the SARS-CoV-2 […] Continue reading ->
The United States Food and Drug Administration decision Thursday to approve Gilead Science’s Remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment failed to consider the results of the recent WHO “Solidarity Trial” – which found no measurable benefits for the drug’s use – because the pharma company failed to include the study in its FDA submission for approval, […] Continue reading ->
While most of us hope that if we can just get one vaccine to market that will be enough to solve our global COVID-19 matrix – the controversial ‘human challenge’ studies now getting underway highlight how many more twists and turns we are likely to face before we finally get out of the pandemic maze. […] Continue reading ->