As the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group reconvenes in Geneva in the quest to nail down an accord on Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS), the former President of Botswana and the President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation argue that this critical annex to the 2025 Pandemic Agreement needs to ensure benefit-sharing commitments are just as mandatory and […] Continue reading ->
The Pandemic Agreement talks resumed at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) headquarters on Monday, kicking off with a public “debriefing” summarising the incremental progress made during informal talks conducted over May and June, followed by a closed session on existing models for sharing data on pathogens with pandemic potential. Speaking at the opening of the […] Continue reading ->
In 1994, Manvati Nag, an indigenous woman from Bijapur district in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, married and moved to Halbaras village in the forested Dantewada region about 80 kilometres away. Although the move was relatively short, it dramatically altered her health. Before moving, Nag never got sick. But after her move, she started […] Continue reading ->
This is a fact: a new pandemic threat is not a question of if, but when. Armed with this knowledge, all leaders must ask themselves: Are we ready, and what more must be done to protect our people and avoid an Ebola- or COVID-sized catastrophe? Over the last decade, outbreak and pandemic monitoring bodies and […] Continue reading ->
As the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria heads into a secretive but highly contentious election of a new Executive Director, the names of several candidates reported to be on the shortlist, all US citizens, have surfaced. They include former Global Fund Executive Director Mark Dybul, former Trump appointee William Steiger and […] Continue reading ->
Dutch, Spanish and Swiss medical experts applied slightly different criteria for discharging patients infected with Andes hantavirus during the recent outbreak on a cruise ship – but none required a negative blood test, as this could remain positive “for months”. This emerged during a briefing convened by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Information Network for […] Continue reading ->
World leaders need to finalise the Pandemic Agreement by applying political will at the “highest level”, a spirit of equity and a sense of urgency. This is the call made by World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in an open letter published on Monday […] Continue reading ->
Ghana’s parliament invited a vociferously anti-vaccine Kenyan and a conservative Dutch activist campaigning to curtail the World Health Organization (WHO) to address visiting MPs on “health sovereignty” last week. Ghanaian President John Mahama – who is championing African “health sovereignty” via an initiative called the Accra Reset – was a keynote speaker at the WHO’s […] Continue reading ->
This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian. The response to the Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) must be rooted in the country’s local health structures and avoid “asymmetrical” suffering by treating those in state-controlled and rebel-run areas the same, says a leading Congolese virologist. The current epidemic […] Continue reading ->
As the Bundibugyo Virus Disease (BVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda reached 608 confirmed cases and 102 deaths, global health leaders called for “an end to the cycle of panic and neglect” in response to disease outbreaks. Describing the Ebola outbreak as a “preventable disaster”, the leaders have written […] Continue reading ->