Protests simmered in Shanghai early on Sunday, as residents in several Chinese cities, many of them angered by a deadly fire in the country’s far west, pushed back against heavy COVID-19 curbs nearly three years into the pandemic. www.ndtv.com/world-news/china-building-fire-that-killed-10-sparks-questions-on-zero-covid-policy-3556802 A fire on Thursday that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of […]
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Dr Soumya Swaminathan to resign as chief scientist at the WHO
Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the WHO, will resign from her post on November 30 after a five-year stint and return to India. The 63-year-old, who is two years short of the WHO’s mandatory retirement age, told The Indian Express that she felt an urge to do “more hands-on practical work” and that she […]
Profile: Anjali Gopalan, Founder of the Naz Foundation Trust and human rights advocate
Article by Ajoy Bose Ajoy Bose is a veteran print journalist, television commentator and author who has written several books on politics, social movements and culture. His latest book Across the Universe: The Beatles in India inspired his debut as director of the award winning documentary The Beatles and India. He has also been involved […]
Tuberculosis rates rise post-COVID
COVID, the new pandemic has made an old one worse. After many years of slow but steady decline, the number of deaths from tuberculosis (TB) is rising again. www.economist.com/international/2022/10/27/how-one-pandemic-made-another-one-worse? According to figures published on October 27 by the WHO’s Global TB Programme, the death toll from tuberculosis was 1.6m in 2021, a rise of 14 […]
Why Are Some Global Health Efforts Failing? | Opinion
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the considerable inequality found in health systems across the globe. While medical advances are saving countless lives, many tragic deaths have occurred across the world from COVID-19, as well as countless other diseases, simply because people are unable to access these lifesaving treatments. In situations like the pandemic, any country […]
Most common current COVID lineages now derive from Omicron strain
Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) began assigning Greek letters to worrying new variants of the coronavirus. The organization started with Alpha and swiftly worked its way through the Greek alphabet in the months that followed. When Omicron arrived in November, it was the 13th named variant in less than a year. But 10 […]
One death every two seconds due to NCDs says WHO
Every two seconds, a person under the age of seventy dies of a noncommunicable disease (NCD) according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report: “Invisible numbers – the true scale of non-communicable diseases”. The report analysed pre-COVID-19 data from 2019 and found that seventeen million deaths resulting from NCDs occurred across the globe, with […]
Late nights may increase risk of heart disease
“Night owls” – or those who typically stay up late into the night and wake up late – are more likely to develop heart disease or type 2 diabetes than people who get to bed and wake up early according to research conducted at Rutgers University in the US. While the act of staying awake […]
Could cancer become a notifiable disease?
India’s current cancer figures are currently based on estimates, with just a minority of cases of the condition actually recorded in cause of death reports. The true burden may be far higher than current figures suggest. The parliamentary standing committee on health and family welfare submitted a report entitled “Cancer Care Plan and Management: […]
Updated COVID-19 boosters get FDA emergency use authorisation; The latest health stories from around the world
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an emergency use authorization for Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated booster vaccines, which target the BA.4/BA.5 coronavirus subvariants. www.science.org/content/article/omicron-booster-shots-are-coming-lots-questions? For the first time since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines look set to receive an update. Boosters reformulated to protect against the Omicron variant, which has […]