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Viewpoint: Why Proposed WHO Reforms Aren’t Enough to Deal With the Next Epidemic
Every May, the members of the World Health Organization (WHO) meet in Geneva for the World Health Assembly (WHA). WHA is incredibly important for how WHO operates, as this is the meeting that determines the organization’s policies and approves its budget. This year’s WHA garnered far more international attention, as it was the first time the member-states were coming together to discuss WHO reforms in the wake of its response to Ebola.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Twitter Top Ten
This week brought a number of developments in global health, social enterprise and financial inclusion - some promising, some disturbing, and one bittersweet. As usual, we’ve highlighted a sample of the reaction to these events on Twitter, along with some long-form pieces that vividly describe some of the big challenges and small triumphs in the sectors we cover.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
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Experts Call for Global Research Fund for Antibiotics, Ebola and Other Neglected Diseases
There were no drugs to treat Ebola in the outbreak that devastated three west African countries, other diseases of the poor are neglected and the pipeline of new antibiotics has dried up. Experts are calling for a $10 billion fund to pay for research and development ahead of the World Health Assembly in Geneva next week.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
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India Needs to Improve Healthcare As Part of Global Millennium Development Goals: WHO
India and many other southeast Asian countries need to improve their record on public healthcare, the WHO said today as it warned that the world will fall short in achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on many indicators by the end of this year.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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Lessons From Liberia Prompt a Renewed Call for Global Health Security
Although Ebola has finally been contained in Liberia, there is much to learn from this latest outbreak. Health officials are taking heed of the valuable lessons gained from the successes, and more importantly, the failures, of this most recent epidemic.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How Social Media Can Be Used to Track Disease Outbreaks
A full nine days before Ebola was even recognized by the World Health Organizations as an epidemic there was something else. HealthMap, a software that mines government websites, social networks and local news reports, identified a “mystery hemorrhagic fever” that was going around.
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- Health Care
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Public health: Behind a vaccine
In August 2014, officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) called global-health specialist Adrian Hill, who is the director of a non-profit vaccine-research centre. They had an urgent question: how soon could the centre launch a clinical trial for an Ebola vaccine? ... Within a month of the phone call, the institute had launched an Ebola-research initiative.
- Categories
- Health Care
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How Has Rwanda Saved the Lives of 590,000 Children?
In 2000, one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals committed the world to reduce child mortality rates by September 2015. At the time, out of every 1,000 live births, an average of 90 children died before the age of five.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
