The World Health Organization warned Monday that polio has reemerged as a public health emergency, after new cases of the crippling disease began surfacing and spreading across borders from countries like Syria and Pakistan.
A new report by WHO–its first to look at antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, globally–reveals that this serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.
In new estimates the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Health Care without Harm organisation have joined forces to launch a new initiative to get mercury removed from all medical measuring devices by 2020.
Cardiovascular diseases remain the number one cause of death throughout the world, and killed nearly 17 million people in 2011, that is 3 in every 10 deaths. Of these, 7 million people died of ischemic heart disease and 6.2 million from stroke, reports the World Health Organization.
At 2.3 billion, the number of people worldwide covered by at least one life-saving measure to limit tobacco use has more than doubled in the last five years, according to the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2013. The number of people covered by bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, the focus of this year’s report, increased by almost 400 million people residing mainly in low- and middle-income countries.
The UN food standards body Codex Alimentarius has agreed on new standards to protect the health of consumers worldwide. These include standards on fruit, vegetables, fish and fishery products and animal feed.
Eleven people have died from the H1N1 influenza virus in northern Chile in an outbreak that the health minister raised the possibility of decreeing a health alert to restrict people's mobility.
Calling tobacco use the deadliest global pandemic ever, Uruguay’s former President Tabaré Vázquez urged decision makers to step up efforts to curb smoking in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Chinese scientists have confirmed for the first time that a new strain of bird flu that has killed 23 people in China has been transmitted to humans from chickens. In a study published online in the Lancet medical journal, the scientists echoed previous statements from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese officials that there is as yet no evidence of human-to-human transmission of this virus.