Category: Development

For this reason, the UN agency and its partners will use the coming year to advocate for greater investment in these crucial health workers.  “Nurses and midwives are the backbone of every health system: in 2020 we’re calling on all countries to invest in nurses and midwives as part of their commitment to health for all,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General.  The International Year of the Nurse and… Read More

The agency believes 2020’s first baby will be born in Fiji and that globally, over half of all births on 1 January will take place in eight countries: India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, the United States of America, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia.  A warm cuddle against her mother’s skin can be life-saving for a premature baby. ‘Kangaroo… Read More

According to the WFP 2020 Global Hotspots Report, millions of people in Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel region will require life-saving food assistance in the coming months – the sheer scale and complexity of which will stretch the UN food relief agency’s capacity to the limit and require generous donor support for a ramped-up… Read More

Time to ‘move the dial’ on climate ambition Six days after the originally scheduled closing of COP25, the head of UNFCCC, the UN body tasked with organising the climate conference, has released a statement  acknowledging that developed countries, particularly those responsible for the highest levels of harmful emissions, did not send a clear enough signal that they are ready to… Read More

This points to what the UN agency described as “an encouraging trend” in prevention and control in major cholera hotspots such as Haiti, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  “The decrease we are seeing in several major cholera-endemic countries demonstrates the increased engagement of countries in global efforts to slow and prevent cholera outbreaks and shows the vital role of… Read More

“For the first time the number of tobacco users is declining worldwide”, Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of the Department of Health Promotion at the World Health Organization (WHO), told journalists on Wednesday in Geneva. For the first time the number of tobacco users is declining worldwide – WHO’s Dr Ruediger Krech In 2018, there were slightly more than a billion… Read More

The UN health agency has prequalified the biosimilar version of the medicine trastuzumab, which has shown high efficacy in curing early stage breast cancer and, in some cases, more advanced forms of the disease.  Nearly a third of the cost  Trastuzumab normally costs around $20,000 per course, putting it out of reach for many women and healthcare systems.   The biosimilar version, derived from biological sources, is around 65 per cent cheaper.   … Read More

At this ‘critical moment’, UN chief urges anti-corruption conference to adopt united front As we enter the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world must “unite against corruption” to stop precious resources from being drained by illicit financial flows, an international conference on the issue heard on Monday in Abu Dhabi. “You meet at a… Read More

A new report, published in the British medical science publication The Lancet on Monday, suggests that, globally, almost 2.3 billion children and adults are overweight, and more than 150 million children are stunted, and warns that undernutrition and obesity can lead to effects across generations.  We are facing a new nutrition reality. All relevant policies and investments must be radically… Read More