WHO published its World health statistics report 2025, revealing the deeper health impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on loss of lives, longevity and overall health and well-being. In just two years, between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy fell by 1.8 years—the largest drop in recent history— reversing a …
THIS year, the World Health Organization (who) set apart April 7 as World Health Day to highlight the international campaign for polio eradication and to provide necessary momentum to it for an envisaged polio-free world. But even while the who director-general, Hiroshi Nakajima, in his message on the occasion, called …
Hailed till recently as a model of efficiency and productivity, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is reeling under a barrage of criticism today. A UN-commissioned review of its operations has reported that the agency "suffers from illness of a cultural type" which would take years to cure. The 2-volume …
A 12- nation African group headed by Zambia and Namibia is gunning for Hiroshi Nakajima, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief. Nakajima has offended the Africans by allegedly making some unpardonable remarks about them at a WHO staff meeting. He reportedly objected to transferring Africans to WHO headquarters, invoking problems …
The Caribbean region has been warned by a dengue fever alert issued by the Pan American Health Organisation. Although dengue fever is endemic to the region, so far the periodic outbreaks have been caused only by dengue viruses of the 1, 2 and 4 strains. However, experts fear the worst …
A World Health Organisation's (WHO) recent B Programme report has warned the world community of tuberculosis epidemic. The annual global death toll from TB could rise to 4 million by AD 2005. This happens even after WHO declared TB a global emergency 2 years ago. And less than 0. 1 …
The British government's volte face on the ban on advertising breast milk substitutes has triggered alarm in medical circles. On March 1, the government tabled before Parliament a watered down regulation that will allow advertising in publications distributed through the public healthcare system. This law is at odds with a …
ONE person dies of smoking every 10 seconds somewhere in the world, but the worst is yet to come, reveals a recent study. Richard Peto of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford, UK, one of the authors of the study, who was recently in Delhi to attend the 16th …
The Nepali government has finally admitted that the state-run Himal cement factory in Kathmandu is a major polluter. The factory will now be fitted with pulse jet filters and filter bags to trap the huge quantities of dust that it emits, according to a Panos report. Once this equipment is …
When the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus was discovered a decade ago, researchers were confident of finding a way to check its growth. Today, about 13 million people have been infected with HIV, but science is still groping in the dark for a cure for AIDS. NEVER underestimate your enemy. But …
RESEARCHERS are unsure of being able to devise a simple series of shots that would give a person lifetime protection against AIDS. To do that, a vaccine will have to ward off all the current HIV strains as well as any future mutants. Vaccines are basically harmless imposters intended to …
HIV IS fast spreading its tentacles in India. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), more than 300 people have contacted AIDS since the first case was reported in India in 1986. It is feared that by the turn of the century, about five million persons in the country …
The dreaded guinea worm disease will be eradicated in India by 1995, claims UNICEF. UNICEF country representative for India Jon Eliot Rhode told newspersons the number of guinea worm cases have reduced drastically over the past decade. Figures provided by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), the nodal agency …
AS A FRONTIER technology today, genetic engineering is attracting the best scientific minds the world over. The ability to manipulate the genetic make-up of living things has the potential, theoretically at least, to transform human health and world agriculture. It also has immense ethical and safety implications for humankind and …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
THE WORLD Health Organisation asked governments and other groups at the Ninth International AIDS Conference held in Berlin in June, to provide it with $2.5 billion annually, to combat the AIDS epidemic and save 10 million people all over the world this decade. The World Bank also endorsed the plan, …
FOR 11 years now in Bangladesh, transnational pharmaceutical firms have been squeezed out of the market because of a drug policy that has kept down prices of medicines, increased their production and encouraged the local drug industry. But the big firms looking for big bucks may be back if the …
THE FIRST patient of the day at M A Muttalib's clinic in Dhaka is a 6-year-old boy. After asking the boy's mother a few questions, Muttalib prescribes medicine for a parasitic and then comments, "The child goes back into the same unsanitary environment and becomes re-infected. Within six months, he'll …
BANGLADESH'S national drug policy is based on the essential drugs concept propounded by the World Health Organisation (WHO). It says that drugs that satisfy the health needs of the majority of the population should be available at affordable prices at all times in the right dosage. Since 1977, WHO has …
NOW THAT Hiroshi Nakajima has been confirmed as director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), at the organisation's annual general assembly held in early May, he has to start setting his house in order -- a formidable task by all accounts. At the WHO annual general assembly, 93 countries voted …
IT IS SAD that the World Health Assembly did not accept the suggestion of AIDS campaigner Jonathan Mann, that the candidate for the director-generalship of the World Health Organisation take part in a globally broadcast debate on health issues. Mann, a candidate himself, was interested, of course, in pursuing his …
