This year’s 73rd edition of the World Health Assembly resumes virtually on Monday, after a two-day emergency huddle in May – against sharply rising COVID-19 infection rates in Europe and the United States, deep geopolitical divides – and calls for reform of the WHO that could strengthen its mandate but also may be resisted by […] Continue reading ->
BRAZZAVILLE – The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to key health services in Africa, raising worries that some of the continent’s major health challenges could worsen. A preliminary analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) of five key essential health service indicators finds a sharp decline in these services between January and September […] 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 ->
New modes of interagency collaboration triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic should be used as a model to advance more progress, post-pandemic, on important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health, said a group of top international agency leaders in Tuesday’s closing session of the World Health Summit. The three-day summit, which featured 310 speakers at […] Continue reading ->
Current levels of public reluctance to be immunized with  a forthcoming COVID-19 vaccine are so high that the resistance would in fact pre-empt many countries from reaching sufficient levels of “community” immunity, according to a new study of vaccine hesitancy among people in 19 of the most COVID-impacted countries around the world. The study of […] Continue reading ->
Some 120 million COVID-19 rapid diagnostic tests will be made available to low and middle-income countries through the World Health Organization-hosted ACT Accelerator, an initiative to scale up COVID-19 drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines. The WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the announcement just before the world crossed the 1 million mark for deaths from […] Continue reading ->
“Social support, which is about ensuring that people have the material resources and necessities required to be able to ensure effective care is delivered, is a critical piece that has been under-invested in and focused on Europe in the US and the response to the pandemic.” – Katie Bollbach, director Of US Public Health Accompaniment […] Continue reading ->
A new Lancet Commission reports shows for the first time that the main killers of the poorest billion people in the world aren’t traditional “diseases of poverty” such as tuberculosis or neglected tropical diseases, but are non-communicable disease such as heart diseases and stroke, and injuries. The Lancet NCDs and Injuries (NCDI) Poverty Commission found that these […] Continue reading ->