NEW DELHI – India faces thousands of medical negligence cases every year, but structural problems make it extremely difficult for patients’ families to find out what has happened to their loved ones – let alone win compensation when treatment has been botched. “A shadow of death is looming over us,” Ashwini Bajaj, a Haryana-based businessman, […] Continue reading ->
African leaders opened the World Health Summit Regional Meeting at the United Nations complex in Nairobi this week with a unified declaration that two decades of dependence on foreign aid for health is over. “The challenge that I see is that many of the leaders in our continent believe that it is somebody else’s responsibility. […] Continue reading ->
Ghana has become the latest African country to reject the United States’ terms for bilateral health assistance, particularly the requirement to share sensitive health data, according to Reuters. Late last year, Zimbabwe rejected US terms for health assistance, particularly the demand to share pathogen data without any “corresponding guarantee of access to any medical innovations […] Continue reading ->
The huge push to reach children who missed vaccinations during COVID-19 has largely paid off, reaching 18.3 million children – but plummeting aid and misinformation threaten future childhood immunisations. This is according to leaders from the vaccine alliance, Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, who reported on the “Big Catch-Up” at a media […] Continue reading ->
Historic declines in Official Development Assistance (ODA) have set international aid back a decade, prompting civil society warnings that the ODA cuts will further devastate funding for global health, education and social protection. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released preliminary data showing total global aid fell by 23.1% in real terms during […] Continue reading ->
The European Commission announced that it will contribute €700 million to the next funding cycle of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at the G7 One Health Summit in Lyon on Tuesday. This was one of several pledges made at the summit, as the World Bank, vaccine alliance Gavi, governments, philanthropies and […] Continue reading ->
Sweeping UK aid cuts have drastically reduced direct bilateral funding to African countries, posing a severe threat to the continent’s most fragile health systems. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials recently confirmed a steep 31% multi-year reduction of the foreign aid budget, shrinking overall spending from £13.7 billion to an estimated £9.2 billion by […] Continue reading ->
Vaping is likely to cause oral and lung cancer, according to a comprehensive review of over 100 studies of the effects of nicotine-based e-cigarettes, published this week in the journal, Carcinogenesis. Carcinogenicity was evident in human studies that monitored biomarkers of harm, including DNA damage, oxidative stress, and “epigenetic change and inflammation in oral and […] Continue reading ->
The rapid withdrawal of international health aid by the United States (US) constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), according to Professor Matthew Herder and colleagues writing in the BMJ this week. According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations, a PHEIC is “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute […] Continue reading ->