Category Archives: World Health Organization

China calls theory that Covid originated in Chinese lab ‘politically motivated lie’

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WHO report has said origins of virus are still unknown and recommended further investigation

China has repeated its assertion the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a leak from a Chinese laboratory is “a politically motivated lie”, after the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended continued investigations this week.

“The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing on Friday.

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North Korea’s Covid outbreak likely ‘getting worse’, WHO says

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Experts doubt state media claims that the worst is over, as WHO warns of global dangers of letting the virus spread unchecked

The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea’s claims of progress in the fight against a Covid-19 outbreak, saying it believes the situation is getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.

North Korean state media has claimed the Covid wave has abated, after daily numbers of people with fever topped 390,000 about two weeks ago.

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Monkeypox outbreak: WHO working on sexual contact theory, top adviser says

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David Heymann says experts developing guidance for countries, as New York City resident tests positive for Orthopoxvirus

A senior adviser for the World Health Organization has said the monkeypox outbreak seems to be spreading through sexual contact, and warned that case numbers could spike over the summer months as people attend major summer gatherings and festivals.

David Heymann, chair of the WHO’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential, led a meeting of the group on Friday “because of the urgency of the situation”.

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WHO official warns monkeypox could accelerate as cases spread across Europe

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The virus has been found in an ‘atypical’ spread in several countries as well as in the United States, Canada and Australia

A top European health official has warned that cases of the rare monkeypox virus could accelerate in the coming months, as the virus spread across Europe.

Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said that “as we enter the summer season … with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission could accelerate”.

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North Korea ‘in great turmoil’ over Covid death toll, says Kim Jong-un

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Regime reports another 21 deaths as fresh outbreaks of coronavirus in South Africa and US concern health officials

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has warned his country has been thrown into “great turmoil” after reporting another 21 deaths, days after the secretive state first admitted it was in the grip of a coronavirus outbreak.

The nation’s total death toll now stands at 27, with 524,440 illnesses attributed to a rapid spread of fever consistent with Covid since late April. The regime said 243,630 people had recovered and 280,810 remained in quarantine. However, it did not specify how many of the cases and deaths had been confirmed as Covid-19 infections.

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China’s zero-Covid policy is not sustainable, WHO director general says

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Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls for shift in approach as scores of Chinese cities remain in strictly enforced lockdown

The head of the World Health Organization has voiced concerns over China’s effort to eliminate the Covid virus, in a rare rebuke to Xi Jinping’s pledge to achieve “dynamic zero-Covid”.

The WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a media briefing on Tuesday that his organisation does not think China’s Covid policy is “sustainable considering the behaviour of the virus”.

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Erosion of abortion rights gathers pace around the world as US signals new era

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A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose. Elsewhere, the battle still rages

In 2022, abortion remains one of the most controversial and bitterly contested ethical and political battlegrounds. It is illegal for women to terminate their pregnancies in any circumstance in 24 countries, with a further 37 restricting access in any case except when the mother’s life is in danger.

As a leaked document signals that the US supreme court is poised to strike down the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade, millions of American women face losing their access to legal abortions, joining millions more living in those countries rejecting a woman’s right to choose.

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Three children in Indonesia die from unidentified form of hepatitis

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Health ministry says symptoms match those of acute liver disease of ‘unknown origin’ found in almost 170 children worldwide

Three children in Indonesia have died from a mysterious liver disease, the country’s health ministry has said, raising the global death toll to at least four.

A severe type of acute hepatitis has been identified in almost 170 children across 11 countries in recent weeks, raising concerns from the World Health Organization (WHO) of the disease’s “unknown origin”.

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Covid-19: India accused of trying to delay WHO revision of death toll

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According to WHO analysis, figure for country is more than 4 million and not official tally of 520,000

India has been accused of attempting to delay an effort by the World Health Organization to revise the global death toll from Covid-19 after its calculations suggested that the country had undercounted its dead by an estimated 3.5 million.

India’s official number of deaths from Covid is 520,000. But according to in-depth analysis and investigations into the data by WHO, the total is more than 4 million, which would be by far the highest country death toll in the world.

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WHO chief blames racism for greater focus on Ukraine than Ethiopia

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says world ‘is not treating the human race the same way’ amid Tigray crisis

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has criticised the global community’s focus on the war in Ukraine, arguing that crises elsewhere, including in his home country of Ethiopia, are not being given equal consideration, possibly because the people affected are not white.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus questioned whether “the world really gives equal attention to Black and white lives” given that ongoing emergencies in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria had garnered only a “fraction” of the concern for Ukraine.

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Non-compliant online STI tests put patients at risk, experts warn

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Few sexually transmitted infection test kits available online meet official standards, BMJ study finds

Patients are being put at risk in the UK because very few sexually transmitted infection (STI) tests offered online meet official standards, experts have warned.

The NHS provides free in-person tests for STIs via its network of sexual health and genitourinary medicine clinics. Patients can also order tests via the internet from both NHS-commissioned and private providers, a practice that has become increasingly popular during the pandemic.

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‘Not fit for purpose’: new noise benchmark needed for Melbourne’s third runway, group says

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Victorian Transport Action Group says standards recommended by World Health Organization are needed

Melbourne airport must adopt new health-based metrics based on World Health Organization research for its proposed third runway to ensure people aren’t exposed to harmful noise levels, a group of transport experts say.

The $1.9bn proposal for the airport’s 3km third runway, due to open by the end of the decade, will be submitted to the federal government for approval next year.

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‘Nowhere on earth are people more at risk than Tigray,’ says WHO chief

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Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says even with war in Ukraine, the world must not forget the crisis unfolding ‘out of sight’ in Ethiopia’s northern region

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the world not to forget the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, saying that even amid the war in Ukraine there is “nowhere on Earth” where people are more at risk than the isolated region of northern Ethiopia.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, is from Tigray and has incurred the wrath of the Ethiopian government in the past after accusing it of placing the region under a de facto blockade. Prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has accused him of bias, and of spreading misinformation.

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Global powers inch closer to agreement to waive Covid vaccine patents

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The move would allow for cheaper generic versions to be manufactured and distributed among developing nations faster

Global powers have inched closer to an agreement to waive patents for Covid-19 vaccines, a move that would allow for cheaper generic versions to be manufactured and distributed among developing nations faster.

A leaked document, seen by the Guardian, reveals details of a compromise struck between the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa that would end a deadlock over an intellectual property waiver, 18 months after the proposal was first taken to the World Trade Organization.

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Harry and Meghan add voices to fierce critique of west’s Covid vaccine policies

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Pair join Gordon Brown and 126 others in attack on ‘self-defeating nationalism, pharmaceutical monopolies and inequality’

Prince Harry and Meghan, the actor Charlize Theron and the former British prime minister Gordon Brown are among 130 signatories to a letter lambasting wealthy countries’ approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, labelling it “immoral, entirely self-defeating and also an ethical, economic and epidemiological failure”.

In a strongly worded open letter published on Friday, the signatories warned “the pandemic is not over”, and said the failure to vaccinate the world was down to “self-defeating nationalism, pharmaceutical monopolies and inequality”.

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Obesity rates likely to double by 2030 with highest rises in lower-income countries

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More than half of women in South Africa projected to have condition, with no country expected to meet WHO target of halting rise, according to World Obesity Atlas figures

More than a billion people around the world will be obese by 2030 – double the number there was in 2010, according to new global estimates.

No country is on track to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) target to halt obesity by 2025, with one in five women and one in seven men predicted to have the condition by 2030.

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‘Aggressive’ marketing of formula milk flouts code, warns WHO as it urges curbs

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‘Misleading’ messages from $55bn-a-year industry are ‘unethical’, says report, which calls for plain packaging rules similar to tobacco

Countries should clamp down on the “aggressive” and “unethical” marketing of formula milk for babies, including forcing companies to sell products in plain packaging, a report by the World Health Organization and Unicef has said.

In research, commissioned 41 years after the global health community drew up guidelines aimed at regulating the industry, experts found that the marketing of formula had “no limits” and had become more “unregulated and invasive” in the digital age.

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Africa transitioning out of pandemic phase of Covid, WHO says

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UN body also says continent’s case numbers may have been seven times higher than official data suggests

Africa is transitioning out of the pandemic phase of its Covid-19 outbreak and moving towards a situation where it will be managing the virus long term, the World Health Organization’s regional head for Africa has said.

“The pandemic is moving into a different phase,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti said. “We think that we’re moving now, especially with the vaccination expected to increase, into what might become a kind of endemic living with the virus.”

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Covid: Europe set for ‘long period of tranquillity’ in pandemic, says WHO

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Vaccinations, milder Omicron and arrival of spring should keep death rate low as cases rise to all time high

Europe could soon enter a “long period of tranquillity” that amounts to a “ceasefire” in the pandemic thanks to the less severe Omicron variant, high levels of immunity and the arrival of warmer spring weather, the World Health Organization has said.

In an upbeat assessment, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said the region was in a position of “higher protection” that could “bring us enduring peace”, even if a new, more virulent variant than Omicron should emerge.

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Peter Greaves obituary

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My friend Peter Greaves, who has died aged 89, was a health and nutrition officer for Unicef whose work made a huge difference to children’s lives around the world. He was an early advocate of low-cost interventions including immunisation, oral rehydration and breastfeeding.

While he was Unicef’s chief nutrition adviser in the mid-1980s, he managed to get Unicef and the World Health Organization to agree on the final draft of The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. This document helped transform global maternal care policies.

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