WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was delivering his report to the 76th World Health Assembly, the UN agency’s decision-making body, which is meeting this week. Threat still remains “The end of COVID-19 as a global health emergency is not the end of COVID-19 as a global health threat,” Tedros told Member States. “The threat of…
The guidance provides a joined-up approach for responding to the threat or arrival of any respiratory pathogen such as flu or the range of coronaviruses, that have the ability to rapidly mutate into different variants. The new Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Initiative, or PRET, incorporates the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established…
In its State of the World’s Children 2023 report, UNICEF says that vaccination coverage levels decreased in 112 countries during the pandemic, “the largest sustained backslide in childhood immunization in 30 years”. According to the agency, a rise in misleading information on vaccines is one of the factors at play. UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell…
File photo The UK has developed a genetic early warning system to identify new forms of future pandemics. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, UK, are developing an important technology to monitor genetic changes in respiratory viruses to identify dangerous new strains and identify new diseases…
Briefing correspondents in Geneva at his regular weekly press conference, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “the claim that the accord will cede power to WHO is quite simply false. It’s fake news.” Countries will decide He made clear that countries themselves will decide the wording and scope of any global agreement on how to tackle the next…
Participants in a panel headlined, Challenges and Opportunities in Creating an Early Warning System for Global Pandemics, on Tuesday warned that we are witnessing the dismantling of essential infectious disease monitoring programmes, at a time when climate change is driving greater risks to public health. “Any platform will need to include data from outside of traditional…
