WHO’s Executive Board is set to meet again next week in a special closed session to consider the fate of the Regional Director of WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO), who has been accused of racism and harassment of staff at the Manila-based office.   In a meeting earlier this week, WHO member states from the […] Continue reading ->
“We have never experienced such killings,” says an aid work as local health centres struggle to help survivors deal with mental health problems in the aftermath of increasingly brutal attacks by the Islamic rebel group, Allied Democratic Forces.  Of the more than 100 armed groups active in DRC’s eastern provinces, one of the oldest and […] Continue reading ->
Following a first-ever outbreak of deadly Marburg virus disease in Equatorial Guinea, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday called an emergency meeting of the Marburg virus vaccine consortium (MARVAC) to receive an urgent update on possible vaccine candidates for the filovirus that can have an 80% fatality rate.   At the meeting, the agency received […] Continue reading ->
The world has changed since the World Health Organization (WHO) was founded 75 years ago. Established as the specialized health agency of the United Nations in 1948, WHO has played a critical role in addressing global health challenges, disease control, and providing health services to neglected populations ever since.  This week, global health leaders gathered […] Continue reading ->
Supporting 100 million tobacco users to quit, increasing exclusive breastfeeding for babies under six months to 48% globally, and helping 63 countries to build climate-resilient health systems are some of the recent successes of the World Health Organization (WHO), said Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Addressing the opening of the WHO’s executive board (EB) […] Continue reading ->
The existing international framework for sharing pathogens is ‘transactional’ and undermines global health security, according to research commissioned by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA). Produced by legal consultancy Covington, the research was developed partly from interviews with 82 public health experts. There were drawn from the pharmaceutical companies (44% of respondents), […] Continue reading ->
The US-Africa Leaders’ Summit ended last week with a strong commitment to strengthen Africa’s health systems, tackle food insecurity and climate change. Meanwhile, top African health officials and scientists meeting at a public health conference in Kigali, Rwanda, at the same time as the summit, vowed to bolster inter-country collaboration to build healthier nations post-COVID. […] Continue reading ->
This month, world leaders gathered in Montreal for a major UN conference on biodiversity, aiming to reach an agreement on how to stop species loss. The Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – COP15 for short–  has drawn tens of thousands of people. Delayed several times, it is the first […] Continue reading ->