Ghana has become the first country in the world to approve a new malaria vaccine from Oxford University, a potential step forward in fighting a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of children each year.
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A Chinese woman has become the first person to die from a type of bird flu that is rare in humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, but the strain does not appear to spread between people.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing threat to global health and was associated with 4.95 million deaths in 2019 globally, more than HIV and malaria combined, as of the WHO’s last readout. Vaccines can be effective tools in combating AMR and have been highlighted by WHO.
The World Health Organization chief pressed China on Thursday to share its information about the origins of COVID-19, saying that until that happened all hypotheses remained on the table, more than three years after the virus first emerged.
The request to consider obesity drugs was submitted by three doctors and a researcher in the United States and covers the active ingredient liraglutide in Novo Nordisk’s obesity drug Saxenda, which will come off patent soon, allowing for cheaper generic versions.
Today the World Health Organization changed its recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, suggesting that high-risk populations should receive an additional dose 12 months after their last booster.
“Understanding #COVID19’s origins and exploring all hypotheses remains: a scientific imperative, to help us prevent future outbreaks (and) a moral imperative, for the sake of the millions of people who died and those who live with #LongCOVID,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is still working to identify the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, its director general said on Friday, after a U.S. agency was reported to have assessed the pandemic had likely been caused by a Chinese laboratory leak.
Contaminated cough and paracetamol syrups imported into Gambia almost certainly caused the deaths of 66 children due to acute kidney injury, according to an investigation led by the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Gambian scientists.
Governments should invest in vaccines for all strains of influenza virus that exist in the animal kingdom as an insurance policy in case of an outbreak in humans, the incoming chief scientist at the World Health Organization said on Monday.