Category Archives: World Health Organization

WHO condemns rush by wealthy nations to give Covid vaccine booster

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Move likened to handing out life jackets to those who already have them while letting others drown

The World Health Organization has condemned the rush by wealthy countries to provide Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, while millions of people around the world have yet to receive a single dose.

Speaking before US authorities announced all vaccinated Americans would soon be eligible to receive booster doses, WHO experts insisted there was not enough scientific evidence to support the additional shot.

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‘Spreading like a virus’: inside the EU’s struggle to debunk Covid lies

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Understaffed and underpowered, a Brussels taskforce tries to fight a fake news tide that threatens to undermine the union itself

In April 2020, near the start of the global pandemic, Felix Kartte was working 14-hour shifts as an EU policy officer, struggling to monitor a barrage of coronavirus-linked disinformation.

Articles claiming that the pandemic was a hoax, that it was caused by 5G, that it could be cured by hydroxychloroquine or alternative medicine were going viral across the continent – part of a global phenomenon the World Health Organization warned was becoming an “infodemic.” Kartte and colleagues in StratCom, the EU diplomatic service’s strategic communications division, could detect what they say were patterns of Covid-denier and anti-vaxxer disinformation linked to Russia and to a lesser extent China, being disseminated in several languages across Europe.

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Concern grows in Kenya after alarming rise in suicide cases

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Mental ill-health and ‘warped’ notions of masculinity among reasons mooted for rise of nearly 50% in a year

There is growing alarm in Kenya over a shocking rise in the number of suicides in the country.

Almost 500 people are reported to have killed themselves in the three months to June this year, more than the whole of 2020, according to the Kenyan police.

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WHO calls for Covid booster pause so those in poorer nations can be vaccinated – video

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The World Health Organization has asked the world's richest countries to delay rolling out booster shots to their populations before at least 10% of the world is vaccinated. 

'We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,' said the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The WHO said the moratorium would help towards the goal of vaccinating at least 10% of every country’s population by the end of September, and would help fight a pandemic that has killed more than 4.25 million people worldwide

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China refuses further inquiry into Covid-19 origins in Wuhan lab

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WHO proposal to audit Chinese laboratories is ‘arrogance towards science’, says health minister

China’s government has refused to cooperate with the second stage of an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, labelling a proposal to audit Chinese labs as “arrogance towards science”.

Chinese health officials held a press conference on Thursday to respond to last week’s proposal by the World Health Organization that the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the pandemic include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019”, meaning the city of Wuhan.

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Migration and Covid deaths depriving poorest nations of health workers

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Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts

The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.

With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.

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WHO chief says push to discount Covid-19 lab leak theory was ‘premature’

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Tedros says ‘accidents happen’ in labs and calls on China to be more transparent

The head of the World Health Organization has acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the Covid-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and said he was asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.

In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that travelled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of Covid-19. The first human cases were identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

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Almost one in three globally go hungry during pandemic – UN

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Big leap in malnutrition during Covid, with fifth of children now believed to be stunted, report warns

The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.

Five UN agencies said the number of people without access to healthy diets grew by 320 million last year to nearly 2.37 billion people– more than the increases in the previous five years combined.

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Health campaigners call for an end to the use of the word leper

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Derogatory use of the “L-word” has increased during Covid and is said to be further marginalising people with the curable disease

Health campaigners are calling for an end to the use of the word leper, saying the language frequently used by politicians and others during the pandemic has made people with leprosy even more marginalised.

The metaphor of the socially outcast “leper” has been used often, whether in media reports on stigma against early Covid-19 patients or by politicians in Italy and Brazil complaining about being seen as “leper colonies”. Campaigners now want an end to the use of what they call the “L-word”.

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WHO urges countries ‘not to lose gains’ by prematurely lifting Covid restrictions – video

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The World Health Organization has urged countries to use extreme caution when easing Covid-19 restrictions to reopen their economies. Dr Michael Ryan, director of the WHO health emergencies programme, said: ‘The idea that everyone is protected and it’s Kumbaya and everything goes back to normal, I think right now is a very dangerous assumption.’ Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that the pandemic was not over and that the milestone of 4 million reported deaths had just been passed. 

Their comments came as Boris Johnson set out plans to end social and economic coronavirus restrictions in England on 19 July

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Kenya in rush to vaccinate 4m children as measles cases surge

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WHO reports measles outbreaks in eight African countries amid huge fall-off in jabs during Covid

Kenya has restarted its vaccination programme in an effort to tackle the re-emergence of measles, which has surged in the country during the Covid restrictions.

A 10-day campaign against highly contagious measles and rubella has begun to target 4 million children aged nine months to five years in 22 of Kenya’s 47 counties where outbreaks are highest.

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Vaccines ‘outpaced by variants’, WHO warns, as Delta now in 98 countries

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Proposals to extend Covid jabs to children in west would delay worldwide rollout, say experts, and allow deadly variants to develop elsewhere

Rich nations are sharing vaccines with low-income countries too slowly to prevent the spread of the Delta variant of Covid, risking millions of lives, the head of the World Health Organization has warned.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said the sharing of vaccines was “only a trickle, which is being outpaced by variants”, after it emerged that the Delta variant is now present in at least 98 countries.

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European region Covid cases jump 10% as WHO calls for Euro 2020 monitoring

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All eyes on Israel, as countries look to see if 85% vaccination rate there will prevent deaths during surge

New Covid cases in the World Health Organization’s 53-country European region rose 10% last week after falling for 10 straight weeks, the body has said, warning of a possible new surge before autumn and calling for more monitoring of Euro 2020 matches.

Infection numbers continue to fall in many parts of the region, including the EU, but Katy Smallwood, WHO Europe’s senior emergencies manager, said some – such as Russia – were recording their highest daily death tolls of the pandemic.

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Africans ‘dangerously exposed’ by lack of Covid jabs, says WHO

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Third wave could be Africa’s worst yet, official says, with health systems in some parts close to overwhelmed

The World Health Organization has made a new appeal for vaccines for Africa, saying a “fast-surging” third wave of Covid-19 is outpacing efforts to protect populations, “leaving more and more dangerously exposed”.

“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder. This is incredibly worrying. With rapidly rising case numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, said on Thursday.

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Water of death: how arsenic is poisoning rural communities in India

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‘A crisis is brewing’, experts warn, with contaminated water exposing villagers to increased risk of cancer and affecting children’s brain development

Nine members of Pankaj Rai’s family have died from cancer over the past 20 years. But the 25-year-old farmer from Bihar only found out their deaths were likely a result of arsenic poisoning when his father got sick.

In 2017, Pankaj took his father, Ganesh Rai, to the Mahavir Cancer Institute & Research Centre in Patna. Ganesh had stage 4 kidney cancer. But Dr Arun Kumar, a scientist at the institute, identified the severe skin lesions on his body as signs of arsenic poisoning.

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WHO voices concerns over Sputnik V Covid vaccine plant

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WHO reports issues with quality control data and test results as Slovakia announces it is offloading 160k doses

The World Health Organization has said it has concerns about the methods used at one plant producing the Sputnik V vaccine, as Slovakia announced it would sell or donate 160,000 of the 200,000 doses it has ordered of the Russian shot.

The WHO, which along with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is reviewing Sputnik V for eventual approval, said in a report on Wednesday it had issues with the integrity of quality control data and test results at one of the four production sites it had seen.

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Vaccines and oxygen run out as third wave of Covid hits Uganda

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Vaccine thefts reported and hospitals unable to admit patients as cases leap 2,800% in a month

Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.

Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.

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Johnson defends G7 deal amid criticism of final communique

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Green campaigners and anti-poverty groups say Cornwall summit failed to address challenges facing the world

Boris Johnson has sought to defend the deal struck by G7 leaders at the Cornwall summit, as green groups and anti-poverty campaigners said the rich nations’ club had failed to match the scale of the challenges facing the world.

The final communique contained no early timetable to eradicate coal-fired emissions, offered only 1bn extra coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poor over the next 12 months and made no new binding commitments to challenge China’s human rights abuses.

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High risk of autumn Covid surge in Europe despite drop in infections, says WHO

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Organisation urges governments to be cautious as societies open up and Delta variant advances

Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths are falling fast across Europe, but the risk of a deadly autumn resurgence remains high as societies open up and the more transmissible Delta variant advances, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The warning came as new case numbers continued to plunge in most of the continent, falling in some areas to their lowest levels since August, and multiple governments, including France and Germany, relaxed restrictions further.

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G7 leaders will call for fresh WHO inquiry into Covid origins, leaked communique suggests

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Statement indicates leaders will also commit to delivering 1bn vaccine doses and plans to tackle forced labour

Leaders at the G7 summit will call for a new, transparent investigation by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a leaked draft communique for the meeting.

The call was initiated by Joe Biden’s administration and follows the US president’s decision to expand the American investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with one intelligence agency leaning towards the theory that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.

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