In a politically charged series of exchanges at a Friday press briefing, World Health Organization officials pushed back against queries by a representative of China’s state-controlled CCTV, asking about whether the SARS-CoV2 virus discovered in Wuhan, China in December of 2019 could have been circulating in humans “outside of China before the outbreak in Wuhan, […] Continue reading ->
Despite the big success this year in the eradication of wild poliovirus in the African region, the COVID-19 crisis has seen a temporary interruption of polio vaccine programmes. This has led to a rise in vaccine-derived polio cases which, are more likely to occur when vaccine coverage is weaker, WHO and African Region health officials […] Continue reading ->
Two competing approaches to promote access to medicines were born during the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the year 2000. Today, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, these same approaches are once more on a collision course.  On the one side is the ‘international’ COVID response, led in name by WHO, but in fact by what […] Continue reading ->
The COVID-19 pandemic will end at some point. But TB, tobacco use, air pollution and other lung diseases will continue to “steal the breath and life of millions of people every year”, unless we reimagine the future, said WHO’s director-general Dr Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus, appearing at the opening of the 51st Union World Conference On […] Continue reading ->