In a world where health workers are scarce, self-care practices can drastically improve people’s quality of life and alleviate strain on health systems, but depend on a range of factors including patient literacy, fair prices and government stewardship. This is according to a one-of-a-kind global study demonstrating the value of self-care that was launched on […] Continue reading ->
Protecting indigenous communities in Canada and refugees in central and Eastern Europe from COVID-19 requires community-based approaches that could be applied in other healthcare crises. This emerged from field actors who shared their experiences and lessons at the Geneva Health Forum on Tuesday. In Canada’s Manitoba province, indigenous communities were mistrustful of mass COVID-19 vaccinations, […] Continue reading ->
China’s COVID-19 situation is getting worse, and strategies to control the spread of the Omicron variant are getting stricter as the country registered 20,472 daily cases on Wednesday – the highest-ever infection rate. The epicentre of the outbreak is Shanghai, which recorded 17,007 cases on Wednesday and municipal authorities are conducting mass testing in the […] Continue reading ->
Two weeks of negotiations in Geneva over a critical new agreement to protect and conserve some 30% of the planet’s land and oceans spaces by 2030 have yielded only halting progress – with the parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) agreeing to meet again in Nairobi in late June. The Nairobi meeting, 21-26 […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization on Friday issued an emergency use listing for a novel COVID vaccine produced – in a move that should help ramp up new rounds of COVID vaccine distributions to low- and middle-income countries in coming months. Approval of the novel vaccine, developed by the US-based firm Novavax, and to be produced […] Continue reading ->
In a historic first, World Trade Organization (WTO) members launched three high-level ministerial statements calling for the global trade body to support fossil fuel subsidy reforms and measures to reduce plastics pollution of land and seas. The pivotal new statements call for a “phase out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, a key driver of climate […] Continue reading ->
Surging fossil fuel use to feed a COVID economic recovery and record numbers of heat-wave days for older groups and agricultural workers; these are just a few of the sobering messages contained in the new Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, just 10 days before the start of the Glasgow Climate Conference. The report, […] Continue reading ->
Deaths from tuberculosis increased for the first time in a decade in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2021 Global TB report. The diversion of health resources to address COVID-19 led to fewer TB diagnoses as well as a drop in treatment last year. This is likely to […] Continue reading ->
The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent diversion of resources toward battling SARS-CoV2 has also set back global efforts to eliminate the world’s second most deadly infectious killer: Tuberculosis, by 2030. Only a doubling of investments next year can pave the way to attainment of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to eliminate the disease, […] Continue reading ->