While the concept of One Health – where multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes – may have once seemed simple, “it is no longer”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, opening the 27th Tripartite Annual Executive Committee Meeting World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).  “We can only prevent future pandemics with an integrated One… Read More

Addressing the virtual meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the goal of providing vaccines to all as “the biggest moral test before the global community”, underlining that everyone, everywhere must be included.   Progress on #COVID19 vaccinations has been wildly uneven & unfair. The world urgently needs a Global Vaccination Plan to bring together all those with the required power,… Read More

The number of coronavirus deaths also declined in all regions by 10 per cent over the same period, with 81,000 fatalities reported in the last week, the UN health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update on Tuesday.   2.3 million victims This brings the overall number of people who died from COVID-19 to more than 2.3 million, according to… Read More

More than 10 airlines are signing agreements with the UN agency to support its ‘Humanitarian Airfreight Initiative’, which will also act as a global logistics preparedness mechanism for other humanitarian and health crises over the longer term.    “Delivery of these life-saving vaccines is a monumental and complex undertaking, considering the sheer volumes that need to be transported, the cold chain requirements,… Read More

“Last week saw the lowest number of reported weekly cases since October”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) told journalists at a regular press briefing in Geneva.   Noting a nearly 50 per cent drop this year, he stressed that “how we respond to this trend” is what matters now.  While acknowledging that there is more reason… Read More

This is he first time the disease has been reported in the country since the deadly 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa which claimed over 11,000 lives.  Very concerned by reports of 4 suspected Ebola deaths in Guinea. @WHO is ramping up readiness & response efforts to this potential resurgence of #Ebola in West Africa, a region which suffered so much… Read More

“We know that this post-COVID-19 condition – or as some patients also call it ‘long COVID’ and some clinicians call it ‘long COVID’ – is a heterogenous group of symptoms that occur after the acute illness”, said Dr. Janet Diaz, Team Lead, Health Care Readiness at WHO.  “So, these are symptoms or complications that can happen potentially a month after, three months after, or even six months after,… Read More

Briefing UN Member States on Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus drew attention to a $27 billion financing gap in the ACT Accelerator, which supports the development and equitable distribution of coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines globally.  “The longer this gap goes unmet, the harder it becomes to understand why, given this is a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars that… Read More

“Even if you have the circulation of a variant in a country, there is no reason that we see for now, not to use the AstraZeneca vaccine as indicated, to be able to reduce the levels of severe disease in that population”, said Dr Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE).  The development follows the recent release of data from a study in South… Read More