Tag: Health News

Today as WHO launches the Global Strategy to Accelerate the Elimination of Cervical Cancer, the first estimates of the contribution of HIV to the global cervical cancer burden are also being released.  Women living with HIV have a six-fold increased risk of cervical cancer when compared to women without HIV. This higher risk is manifested throughout the lifecycle starting with… Read More

More than one year on across the pilot countries of Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, more than 1 million doses of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine have been administered, and an estimated 480,000 children have received their first dose of vaccine in childhood vaccination and should benefit from this additional malaria prevention. Kenya marked its 1st anniversary of the launch of the… Read More

WHO‘s Global Strategy to Accelerate the Elimination of Cervical Cancer, launched today, outlines three key steps: vaccination, screening and treatment. Successful implementation of all three could reduce more than 40% of new cases of the disease and 5 million related deaths by 2050. Today’s development represents a historic milestone because it marks the first time that 194 countries commit to… Read More

A new WHO Certification Programme for Trans Fat Elimination aims to recognize countries that have eliminated industrially produced trans-fatty acids (TFA) from their national food supplies. This is the first-ever certification programme that will recognize countries for their efforts to eliminate one of the main risk factors for noncommunicable diseases and protect their populations from premature death. Increased TFA intake… Read More

Member States recommended the adoption of two resolutions on meningitis control and epilepsy at the 73rd World Health Assembly on Thursday (November 12). Committee A, which focuses on programme and budget matters, decided to recommend the adoption of the first-ever resolution on meningitis, which would approve a global roadmap to defeat meningitis by 2030 – a disease that kills 300,000 people… Read More

The heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), and the World Health Organization (WHO) today launched the new One Health Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance. Group members include heads of government, government ministers, leaders from private sector and civil society. The group is co-chaired by their Excellencies… Read More

At the 73th Session of the World Health Assembly, Member States endorsed a resolution calling for scaled-up and integrated action on epilepsy and other neurological disorders and asked that a global action plan be developed for consideration at the 75th Session of the World Health Assembly. Neurological disorders are the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of death.… Read More

WHO has developed the assistive technology capacity assessment (ATA-C) tool, a system-level tool to evaluate a country’s capacity to finance, regulate, procure and provide assistive technology. The ATA-C tool enables countries to better understand the current status and identify key actions to improve access to assistive technology: it can be used for awareness raising, policy and programme design and ongoing… Read More

In collaboration with the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney, Australia, WHO has published today a systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence and incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in men who have sex with men (MSM) in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. Globally an estimated 71 million people have chronic HCV infection and each year, there are an… Read More

On World Children’s Day, WHO is pleased to issue a call urging stakeholders to accelerate access to effective paediatric HIV and tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics and medicines. The Action Plan, which is launched today, has been developed by a wide group of stakeholders under the auspices of the Fifth Vatican High-Level Dialogue on Paediatric HIV and TB in Children Living with… Read More