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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — In a pair of Cape Town warehouses converted into a maze of airlocked sterile rooms, young scientists are assembling and calibrating the equipment needed to reverse engineer a coronavirus vaccine that has yet to reach South Africa and most of the world's poorest people.
LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization said there was a 7% rise in new coronavirus cases across Europe last week, the only region in the world where cases increased, and said uneven vaccine uptake posed a threat to the continent.
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — U.N. agencies are gearing up to vaccinate all of Afghanistan’s children under 5 against polio for the first time since 2018, after the Taliban agreed to the campaign, the World Health Organization says.
GENEVA (AP) — FIFA and Qatari organizers of next year's World Cup teamed up with the World Health Organization on Monday to use soccer’s marquee event for promoting public health.
The move follows years of scrutiny on Qatar and criticism of conditions for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers needed for massive projects tied to the tournament.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Only one in seven COVID-19 infections in Africa are being detected, meaning the continent's estimated infection level may be 59 million people, according to a new study by the World Health Organization.
LONDON (AP) — The number of people killed by tuberculosis has risen for the first time in more than a decade, largely because fewer people got tested and treated as resources were diverted to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said.
BEIJING (AP) — China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday warned against what it called possible “political manipulation” of a renewed probe by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, while saying it would support the international body's efforts.
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is ready to provide up to 300 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, a top Russian official promoting the shot says, even though the World Health Organization hasn’t yet signed off on it and production issues have fanned customers' concerns worldwide.
GENEVA (AP) — The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the coronavirus.
LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization said Wednesday that officials have begun vaccinating people in eastern Congo against Ebola, after it was confirmed last week that the disease killed a toddler.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — African health officials are optimistic that the world’s first malaria vaccine endorsed by the World Health Organization will “dramatically change” the way the continent of 1.3 billion people fights the disease.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The World Health Organization has started shipping COVID-19 medical supplies into North Korea, a possible sign that the North is easing one of the world’s strictest pandemic border closures to receive outside help.
LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the world's first malaria vaccine and said it should be given to children across Africa in the hope that it will spur stalled efforts to curb the spread of the parasitic disease.
GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization is still reviewing data about Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine as part of hopes that it can be approved by the U.N. health agency for emergency use against coronavirus, but said Tuesday that no decision is imminent.
STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — The annual Nobel Peace Prize shines the brightest of lights on the person or group thought to have done most to promote peace. But guessing who it will be is just a stab in the dark.
GENEVA (AP) — The French government called Wednesday on the head of the World Health Organization to uphold his pledge for an "action plan” to combat sexual abuse and exploitation by WHO employees after independent investigators found scores of accusations stemming from the agency's response to an Ebola outbreak in Congo.
BENI, Congo (AP) — Twenty-one workers for the World Health Organization in Congo have been accused of sexually abusing people during a Ebola outbreak, a WHO-commissioned panel said Tuesday in a report that identified 83 alleged perpetrators connected to the 2018-2020 mission.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban’s newly appointed envoy to the United Nations on Wednesday urged quick world recognition of Afghanistan’s new rulers even as the World Health Organization raised the alarm of an impending health care disaster in the war-wracked country.
GENEVA (AP) — The harmful health effects of air pollution kick in at lower levels than previously thought, the World Health Organization said Wednesday as it set a new standard for policymakers and the public in the first update of its air quality guidelines in 15 years.
BEIRUT (AP) — The World Health Organization’s director general on Friday expressed deep concern about the impact of Lebanon’s economic meltdown and multiple crises on the wellbeing of the nation, and said the brain drain among the country's health workers is particularly worrisome.
GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization and its partners said they hope to provide Africa with about 30% of the COVID-19 vaccines the continent needs by February, badly missing the 60% vaccination coverage goal that African leaders had once hoped for this year.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Africa’s already thin supply of COVID-19 vaccines has taken another significant hit, with the World Health Organization’s Africa director saying Thursday that for various reasons, including the rollout of booster shots, “we will get 25% less doses than we were anticipating by the end of the year."
GENEVA (AP) — Rich countries with large supplies of coronavirus vaccines should refrain from offering booster shots through the end of the year and make the doses available for poorer countries, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday, doubling down on an earlier appeal for a “moratorium" on boosters that has largely been ignored.
BERLIN (AP) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday inaugurated a new “hub” in Berlin that aims to help prepare the globe better to prevent future pandemics.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and German Chancellor Angela Merkel cut the ribbon to launch the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — COVID-19 vaccinations in Africa tripled over the past week, though protecting even 10% of the continent by the end of September remains “a very daunting task," the Africa director of the World Health Organization said Thursday.
BEIJING (AP) — China went on the offensive Wednesday ahead of the release of a U.S. intelligence report on the origins of the coronavirus, bringing out a senior official to accuse the United States of politicizing the issue by seeking to blame China.
LONDON (AP) — The international scientists dispatched to China by the World Health Organization to find out where the coronavirus came from said Wednesday the search has stalled and warned that the window of opportunity for solving the mystery is “closing fast.”
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for a two-month moratorium on administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines as a means of reducing global vaccine inequality and preventing the emergence of new coronavirus variants.
GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has issued a call for experts to join a new advisory group it’s forming, in part to address the agency’s fraught attempts to investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Rich countries’ decisions to roll out COVID-19 booster shots while so many people across Africa remain unvaccinated “threaten the promise of a brighter tomorrow" for the continent, the Africa director for the World Health Organization said Thursday, warning that “as some richer countries hoard vaccines, they make a mockery of vaccine equity.”
LONDON (AP) — When a World Health Organization-led team traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a top official said he was worried about safety standards at a laboratory close to the seafood market where the first human cases were detected, according to a documentary released Thursday by Danish television channel TV2.
GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization called Wednesday for a moratorium on administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines as a way to help ensure that doses are available in countries where few people have received their first shots.
BEIJING (AP) — China cannot accept the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.
Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was “rather taken aback" that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.
TOKYO (AP) — The Tokyo Olympics should not be judged by the tally of COVID-19 cases that arise because eliminating risk is impossible, the head of the World Health Organization told sports officials Wednesday as events began in Japan.
BERLIN (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.
COVID-19 deaths and cases are on the rise again globally in a dispiriting setback that is triggering another round of restrictions and dampening hopes for a return to normal life.
The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that deaths climbed last week after nine straight weeks of decline.
LONDON (AP) — Top officials at the World Health Organization say there's not enough evidence to show that third doses of coronavirus vaccines are needed and appealed Monday for the scarce shots to be shared with poor countries who have yet to immunize their people instead of being used by rich countries as boosters.
BEIRUT (AP) — Coronavirus infections have been on the rise in the 22 countries of the eastern Mediterranean region after two months of steady decline because of increased international travel, low protection and limited vaccination, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Driven by the delta variant, a new wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across the African continent where new cases, hospital admissions, and deaths are increasing.
“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before," said Dr.
GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization said Thursday that any COVID-19 vaccines it has authorized for emergency use should be recognized by countries as they open up their borders to inoculated travelers.
BEIJING (AP) — As the World Health Organization draws up plans for the next phase of its probe of how the coronavirus pandemic started, an increasing number of scientists say the U.N. agency it isn’t up to the task and shouldn’t be the one to investigate.
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has told the World Health Organization it tested more than 30,000 people for the coronavirus through June 10 but has yet to find a single infection.
The WHO said in a monitoring report Tuesday that North Korea’s testing figures included 733 people who were tested during June 4-10, of which 149 were with influenza-like illnesses or severe respiratory infections.