While significant progress has been made in the region towards vaccinating populations against COVID-19, several countries missed the global target to fully vaccinate 70 per cent of their total population with all primary doses of the vaccine by June end, a WHO statement said.
The World Health Organization's emergency committee will meet on Thursday to discuss whether the spiralling monkeypox outbreak warrants the declaration of a global emergency.
"Business as usual for mental health simply will not do," says WHO
A WHO spokesperson said that the process of naming diseases should be “done with the aim to minimise the negative impact” and avoid offending any “cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups."
The World Health Organization has announced the creation of a new vaccine-sharing mechanism to combat monkeypox outbreaks in more than 30 countries outside of Africa.
The World Health Organization will assemble an emergency committee of specialists to evaluate whether the rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak outside of Africa can be classified as a global health emergency.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.
According to a World Health Organization weekly report released Wednesday, the number of new coronavirus infections and deaths reported worldwide decreased last week, with the exception of the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Bharat Biotech did not immediately react to the development, but company sources reportedly said that all export orders already stand cancelled as the production has been halted.
The UN's health agency said that while epidemiological investigations are ongoing, most reported cases so far have been presented through sexual health or other health services in primary or secondary health care facilities and have involved mainly, but not exclusively, men who have sex with men (MSM).
"The sudden appearance of monkeypox in many countries at the same time suggests there may have been undetected transmission for some time,": World Health Organization
The cost of cleaning up abandoned tobacco products falls on taxpayers rather than the industry, according to the World Health Organization, and it costs India roughly USD 766 million each year.
More than 300 suspected and confirmed cases of monkeypox, a usually mild illness that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and a distinctive rash, have been reported in May.
WHO stated that the sudden appearance of monkeypox at once in several non-endemic countries suggests undetected transmission for some time and recent amplifying events.
"The public health risk could become high if this virus exploits the opportunity to establish itself as a human pathogen and spreads to groups at higher risk of severe disease such as young children and immunosuppressed persons," WHO said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was re-elected by the members of the World Health Organization's (WHO), the president of the World Health Assembly said on Tuesday.
"We want to stop human-to-human transmission. We can do this in the non-endemic countries... This is a containable situation," the WHO's emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove told a live interaction on the UN health agency's social media channels.
The UN health agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told officials gathered in Geneva for opening of the WHO’s annual meeting that “declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus.” He also noted that almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries still haven’t been vaccinated.
India’s ten lakh all-women ASHA volunteers were honoured by the WHO on Sunday for their crucial role in providing direct access to healthcare facilities in rural areas and their indefatigable efforts to rein in the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said the detection of the new wild poliovirus case was “greatly concerning”.
Many of the cases are not linked to travel to the continent. As a result, the cause of this outbreak is unclear, although health authorities have said that there is potentially some degree of community spread.
In the latest outbreak, Monkeypox virus has been detected in the Canada, United States, United Kingdom Italy, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.
"The vaccine meets WHO standards for protection against Covid-19 and... the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh risks," the UN health agency said in a statement.
Monkeypox: The WHO said it was also investigating that many cases reported were people identifying as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men.
New Delhi, May 18 India saw over 23.5 lakh premature deaths due to pollution of all types -- including 16.7 lakh fatalities caused by air pollution ..