Budget and broader access top assembly's global health agenda
The 76th World Health Assembly ended after moving to strengthen its budget and broaden access to health care.
World Health Organization (WHO)
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WHO chief opens assembly with push for 'historic' pandemic treaty
The COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus many of the world's glaring inequalities between rich and poorer nations.
Cholera spread fueled by conflict and climate puts 1 billion at risk
Heavy rains and warmer temperatures make it easier for the bacteria that causes cholera to spread, posing a major setback for global efforts to eradicate the disease.
Progress in reducing deaths during pregnancy and birth has 'flatlined'
More than 4.5 million pregnant women and babies die each year during pregnancy, childbirth or during the first few weeks of life – about one death globally every seven seconds.
U.N. health agency declares COVID-19 no longer a global emergency
Though the emergency phase is over, the World Health Organization's pandemic designation still holds.
Human rights and aid concerns spike as waves of Sudanese flee
Most of Khartoum, Darfur and North Kordofan are too dangerous to operate in, the U.N. refugee agency said.
Human-induced climate change worsened Horn of Africa drought
Low rainfall and high evaporation rates 'would not have led to drought at all in a 1.2° C. cooler world,' scientists concluded.
At 75, U.N. health agency is lightning rod for equity and cooperation
As the World Health Organization celebrated its 75th anniversary – commemorating World Health Day and the day its constitution took effect, recognizing health as a human right – the COVID-19 pandemic's lessons were inescapable.
WHO chief calls 3-year pandemic 'a chaotic patchwork of responses'
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered three lessons the world must learn to be able to effectively cope with future global health crises.
In the Greater Horn of Africa, tens of millions hungry and driven to flee
The staggering numbers include 129,000 people "facing starvation and staring death in the eyes," while 11.9 million children under five likely will face acute malnutrition in 2023.
WHO fires Western Pacific regional chief over 'findings of misconduct'
The global health organization said it plans to hold a closed-door election to replace Dr. Takeshi Kasai in October.
Nations work to update draft of WHO's proposed pandemic treaty
The treaty takes aim at the huge inequalities in health care and access to products such as vaccines, therapeutics and tests that the COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus.
WHO's COVID origins investigation in China has become 'very difficult'
The U.N. health agency says it updated its plans based on China's response but there's been "no quiet shelving of any plans" for investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Groups scramble aid as Turkey-Syria earthquake toll reaches 20,000
Fresh snowfall, freezing temperatures and a disrupted cross-border operation between southern Turkey and war-torn northern Syria added to the despair, frustration and anger.
Pollution, climate change feed drug-resistant 'superbugs'
Fed by pollution and climate change, strains of bacteria immune to all known antibiotics may become a major cause of death by mid-century, says the U.N. environment agency.
Keywords for the next pandemic: accountability, equity, solidarity
Chief among the questions over a proposed pandemic treaty is an "accountability gap" that undermines the proposed treaty's potential, an independent coalition of global leaders said.