BUKOBA, Tanzania – Scientists have identified the mystery disease that has killed five people in the last week in Tanzania’s north-western Kagera region as the highly contagious Marburg virus, which is a filovirus like Ebola. Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu announced this on Tuesday but said that her government has managed to control the spread of […] Continue reading ->
Nearly two dozen survivors of the UN’s largest known sexual abuse scandal say the World Health Organization (WHO) has been slow to make good on promises of support, and that when assistance has come it has been too little to rebuild their lives. This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian. After suffering abuse […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization on Wednesday said it is terminating the contract of the Director for the agency’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO), following a prolonged investigation of allegations of abusive conduct towards his staff. The terse WHO announcement came at the conclusion of a two-day special session of the WHO Executive Board, tasked with […] Continue reading ->
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 ->
Nine months after John Nkengasong left Africa CDC to head PEPFAR, the African Union has now elected a Director General for the continent’s leading public health institution who has the task of finding new ways to engage continental and global leaders in Africa’s public health challenges in the post-COVID era. A new Director-General has been […] Continue reading ->
Just 66 days after the SARS-CoV2 genetic sequence was shared by a Chinese scientist online, the first COVID-19 vaccines went into production – in record time for R&D that yielded the first approved vaccines less than a year later. But there are looming concerns that the relatively open models of data and pathogen sharing that […] 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 ->