The World Health Organization said Tuesday that it would reconsider its longtime stance that airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus occurs only rarely – after a group of over 239 scientists published a commentary on Monday in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, urging the agency to acknowledge the greater role played by tiny virus […] Continue reading ->
Ibadan, Nigeria – The first time that businessman Soji Adegbite missed his flight, he was heading to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from Nigeria’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport located in Africa’s largest city of Lagos. “I got there just five minutes late but that was all it took to miss the flight,” he told Health Policy Watch. […] Continue reading ->
In the past three decades, global fish consumption has surged by a stunning 122%. Yet today, only 66% of global stocks are fished within sustainable levels, in comparison to 90% in the 1970s. “There is no healthy planet without a healthy ocean, and the healthy ocean is currently in decline”, said Peter Thomson at a conference Tuesday on overfishing […] Continue reading ->
The United States has secured almost all of Gilead Sciences’ projected production of remdesivir – an antiviral that was shown to reduce hospitalization times for COVID-19 patients- for the next three months. US Health and Human Services (HHS) has secured 100 percent of Gilead’s projected production for July (94,200 treatment courses), 90 percent of production […] Continue reading ->
New Delhi, India – Prime Minister Narendra’s Modi’s ambitious plan to use coal to power India’s economic revival after his government’s strict lockdowns flattened the wrong curve, bringing economic growth to a halt even as the infection epidemic curve continued to rise, seems to have run into significant opposition from unexpected quarters. Since the launch […] Continue reading ->
Germany has pledged an unprecedented € 500 million to the World Health Organization for 2020, making this the “highest amount” ever provided by the country, said Jens Spahn, German Minister of Health at an impromptu WHO press briefing on Thursday. The German contribution, equal to about 20% of WHO’s annual budget, plugs the major funding […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization has reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period. The number of new daily COVID-19 cases has risen each day for the last three days, and more than 9 million people have contracted the virus around the world. It […] Continue reading ->
As the world hit a sober new milestone of reporting more than 150,000 new COVID-19 cases in one day, another slow burning crisis has also reached new heights. There are now nearly 80 million refugees around the world, making more than 1% of the world’s population forcibly displaced by the end of 2019, according to […] Continue reading ->
In the past forty years, the world has done “really well” on improving food availability. But meanwhile, diets have shifted in “very bad”, unhealthy directions. Even people who can afford nutritious food are opting for junk food instead, said Steve Godfrey, of the Geneva-based food and nutrition NGO, GAIN, at a conference on food systems […] Continue reading ->
The early resignation of Roberto Azevedo from the post of Director General (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), sets the stage for a highly politicized competition over his successor – who will face a major challenge in demands to reshape the WTO in the wake of repeated US complaints about its trade dispute rulings […] Continue reading ->