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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...‘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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says Covid pandemic has proven that health is ‘an international issue’
The head of the World Health Organization has warned member countries that the UN’s global health body is being “set up to fail” without a “paradigm shift” in the way that it is funded and supported.
In stark language delivered to the WHO’s executive board, the organisation’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 5.5 million lives, had underlined the need to strengthen health systems as well as pandemic preparedness plans.
Continue reading...UK transport secretary says testing rules for travellers into country will change from 4am on 11 February; new France rules come into force
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, for today. I’m handing you over to my colleague Martin Belam.
Before I go, here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
Continue reading...Ireland’s premier Micheál Martin says ‘we have weathered the Omicron storm’; France reports 400,851 daily cases and 233 Covid-linked hospital deaths
China has reported its lowest daily tally of local confirmed Covid-19 cases in nearly two months, after a national strategy to stamp out flare-ups and lock down affected cities.
China reported 23 domestically transmitted infections with confirmed symptoms for Thursday, official data showed, down from 43 a day earlier.
Continue reading...