COVID-19, conflicts and climate change are posing additional challenges to efforts to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) in the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMRO), the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged on the eve of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day on Monday. “The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the vulnerability of our health, social protection and economic systems,” Dr […] Continue reading ->
Leading public health experts are calling for urgent action to develop antibiotics for newborn babies, a population that is particularly vulnerable to antibiotic resistance. Each year, there are an estimated three million cases of neonatal sepsis causing up to 570,000 deaths, many due to a current lack of effective antibiotics, according to a paper published […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has pushed back on media reports that its board has decided to end COVID vaccine support for 37 middle-income countries next year – and end altogether the dedicated COVAX vaccine facility, supplying free vaccines to some 92 low- and middle-income countries, in 2024. A high-ranking official at Gavi told Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
A four-year-old asthmatic girl from Ukraine was forced to relocate to a gas station earlier this week where she could connect her ventilator, after a Russian missile attack cut off her city’s electricity supply, leaving her without any other means of receiving life-saving oxygen. Pictures of her frightened, frozen eyes made social media. But according […] Continue reading ->
Spending on health increased worldwide by 6% on average in real terms in the year 2020, according to the World Health Organization’s latest global review of health finance. The analysis found that global spending on health reached US$ 9 trillion in 2020, or 10.8% of global gross domestic product (GDP), but remains highly unequal across […] Continue reading ->
A massive campaign is underway to distribute at least 8.8 million nets to 16 million residents of Kano State in Nigeria to prevent malaria Morning sunlight, bright as a dazzling diamond, sets Mazangudu village in Kano, northern Nigeria, awake. Motorcycle rumbles mix with the boom of microphones calling Muslims to salat prayer. A gentle breeze […] Continue reading ->
There should be much harsher penalties, including homicide charges, for those who intentionally falsify medicine and include harmful ingredients, according to Kawaldip Sehmi, CEO of the International Alliance of Patients’ Organisations (IAPO). Sehmi was speaking at an event hosted by Fight the Fakes Alliance in Geneva on Wednesday to highlight the global proliferation of fake […] Continue reading ->
A group of African parliamentarians raised a red flag on Tuesday at the UNITE Global Summit when they told representatives that they felt neglected by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which funds billions of dollars of health services in their countries. “Do African parliamentarians only get involved when we have to […] Continue reading ->
Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at […] Continue reading ->
“Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called […] Continue reading ->