After months of speculation, prospective candidates in the race to become the next Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) are now emerging. At the same time, member states have launched a process to review the global health architecture, with the aim of clarifying roles, strengthening coordination, and aligning financing more closely with national, regional, […] Continue reading ->
African scientists, institutions and communities are helping advance the development of new TB vaccines. Governments must now work together to prepare national systems, secure fair pricing and ensure scientific progress leads to timely and equitable access. When I visited the University of Cape Town Lung Institute and the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) in […] Continue reading ->
Twice in three years – at its 75th anniversary and again this July at the Constitution’s 80th – the World Health Oganization (WHO) has told the official story of what it has achieved. Twice, water, sanitation, air, chemicals and climate have been left out. The former head of WHO’s environmental health programme argues this is […] Continue reading ->
A finance ministry official can now draft in an afternoon what used to take a WHO mission, a consultant and a wait of weeks. That single fact, multiplied across almost everything WHO produces, is the real story behind this year’s budget cuts — and almost nobody in Geneva is telling it yet. Picture a health […] Continue reading ->
Eighteen months into the dismantling of the global AIDS response, how many have died? The honest answer is that nobody knows. Rio’s numbers are inferences, its assumptions and projections disputable. But 30 years and tens of billions of dollars into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we should not still be guessing. The week’s Vital Signs came from […] Continue reading ->
Last week, one phrase — “self-reliance” — did more work in global health than any medicine, as global agencies continue operationalising donor retreats they can no longer disguise. The strategy’s real-world test is unfolding in eastern Congo, where the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record is outrunning a struggling response. The institutions of global health spent […] Continue reading ->
HPV vaccines have transformed cervical cancer prevention, but the next generation of vaccines must better reflect regional disease patterns, including the HPV35 genotype prevalent in Africa.   The recent WHO Global Status Report on Cancer paints a sobering picture. Among the many challenges, human papillomavirus, or HPV, is one of the world’s most serious infectious causes of […] Continue reading ->
Africa can no longer afford to manage cancer care as a perpetual crisis. Instead, policy leaders must recognize this crisis for what it truly is: the ultimate ‘stress test’ for national health systems.  The WHO Global Status Report on Cancer, published this week, highlights the persistent inequities in access to timely cancer diagnosis and treatment […] Continue reading ->