Category: Health

According to UNHCR, 42 suspected mpox cases have been detected in the South Kivu Province of the DRC – the war-ravaged central African country which is the epicentre of the outbreak. There have been other suspected and confirmed cases among refugee populations in the Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Caseload grows On 14 August, […]

These restrictive laws have forced many women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, travel abroad to have legal abortions or seek private unsafe procedures, based on information from the UN human rights office (OHCHR). The report from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) published on Monday, found that most abortions […]

More than 640,000 children are targeted to receive the polio type two (nOPV) vaccines, UNICEF said in a post on X. The World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s main agency assisting Palestine refugees (UNRWA) and other partners aim to coordinate to reach the unvaccinated as the war grinds on against the backdrop of multiple civilian […]

“Responding to this complex outbreak requires a comprehensive and coordinated international response,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Member States, as cases spread beyond Africa to Europe and Asia. The briefing was held just over a week after he declared that mpox was a public health emergency of international concern. New mpox virus strain Tedros […]

Briefing journalists in Geneva, Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, insisted that the risk from mpox to the general population was “low”. He rejected comparisons between the fast-spreading viral disease which the agency declared an international public health emergency last week, and the COVID-19 pandemic, “regardless of whether it’s mpox clade 1, behind the […]

But, what is it, where did it come from and how can the world deal with the threat, which inevitably raises the spectre of pandemics past such as COVID-19 and the early spread of HIV infections? Here’s what you need to know: Mpox lesions often appear on the palms of hands. (file) What is mpox? […]

“Flying to transport food to those who need it is the most fulfilling mission I have ever done,” said UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) pilot Christine Brown about her job delivering World Food Programme (WFP) support, along with humanitarian workers, to some of Burkina Faso’s most remote, food-insecure and conflict-torn hotspots.  ”It is heartbreaking to […]

The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for the meeting last Wednesday to seek advice on whether the mpox – previously monkeypox – outbreaks are cause for international concern.  On Tuesday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared the situation a public health emergency. “The Emergency Committee’s advice to me, and that of […]

“Extreme heat is increasing, disrupting children’s health, well-being and daily routines,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. The study compared averages in the 1960s with the period 2020-2024, measuring the days which exceeded 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). It presents a stark warning over the speed and scale at which such days are increasing for almost half a […]

“At least two rounds of [orally delivered polio vaccine] will be necessary to shut down transmission,” the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) explained in an update. The development comes after vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 was identified on 16 July by the Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN) in sewage samples collected on […]