News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A World Health Organization (WHO) expert has expressed concern that guest workers in the Middle East could carry the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) to India and the Philippines, according to a media report, while a few more details emerged about three Tunisian cases reported yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Saying recent major gains in the fight against polio are at risk, global health groups yesterday announced an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) to try to eradicate the disease by driving it out of its last three strongholds: Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

(CIDRAP News) – Global health groups today unveiled a strategy to battle emerging insecticide resistance in malaria-carrying mosquitoes, a problem they say could be minimized or reversed now before resistance becomes established in mosquito populations.

(CIDRAP News) – Global health officials are making headway with driving down the number of measles deaths, but there are signs that progress is stalling, a pattern that has kept nations from meeting a global mortality benchmark, researchers reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – When the World Health Assembly (WHA) considers the fate of the remaining stocks of smallpox virus this week, the debate is likely to be framed in part by a report from a group of independent experts that says the only strong reason for keeping the virus is to satisfy strict regulatory requirements for new vaccines and antivirals.

(CIDRAP News) – An article published by the British Medical Journal says three scientists who helped frame World Health Organization (WHO) guidance on pandemic influenza preparedness had consulted for pharmaceutical companies that stood to profit from the WHO guidance and that the WHO did not disclose the scientists' industry ties.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), opened in Geneva today with director-general Dr Margaret Chan praising the accomplishments of global partners with diseases such as smallpox and polio but noting that health officials got lucky with the pandemic H1N1 virus because it has not overwhelmed medical systems and is a good match with the vaccine.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today recognized 15 H5N1 avian influenza cases from Indonesia dating back to late January, a few weeks after the country stopped sending H5N1 virus samples to the WHO as a protest against developing nations' lack of equal access to pandemic vaccines.