Latest news

Health services must stop leaving older people behind

HelpAge International/J. Escribano

29 September 2017 – Ahead of the International Day of the Older Person – 1 October – WHO calls for a new approach to providing health services for older people. WHO highlights the role of primary care and the contribution community health workers can make to keeping older people healthier for longer. Older adults are more likely to experience chronic conditions and often multiple conditions at the same time. Yet today’s health systems generally focus on the detection and treatment of individual acute diseases.

• News release

• World Heart Day
• Deworming
• Rabies
• Abortion

Philippines embraces efforts to step up cardiovascular disease care

M. Receo

29 September 2017 – WHO is supporting efforts in Manila to step up prevention, detection and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, the world’s number one killer, responsible for one-third of all deaths in the Philippines. On this World Heart Day, the success of this initiative shows action can be taken to beat cardiovascular diseases. Noncommunicable diseases, primarily cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic lung diseases and diabetes, impact all age groups in the Philippines, especially the nation’s young.

• Feature

Large-scale deworming recommended for children’s health

WHO

29 September 2017 – Four species of intestinal worms affect almost a quarter of the world’s poorest and mostly marginalized people. They disrupt people’s ability to absorb nutrients, and impede the growth and physical development of millions of children. Periodic deworming programmes with a single-tablet treatment can drastically reduce the suffering of those infected and protect the 1.5 billion people currently estimated to be at risk.

• News release
• Guidelines

Education programmes save lives from rabies in India

WHO

28 September 2017 – Rabies almost always kills humans once symptoms appear. However, many of these deaths can be prevented if people can obtain a series of post-bite vaccinations as soon as possible after they are bitten. The challenge is that many people do not know the risks of animal bites. This story from Goa, India shows the importance of education in saving lives from rabies on World Rabies Day.

• Feature story
• 10 facts on rabies

An estimated 25 million unsafe abortions occur each year

WHO

28 September 2017 – Worldwide, 25 million unsafe abortions (45% of all abortions) occurred every year between 2010 and 2014, according to a new study by WHO and the Guttmacher Institute published in The Lancet. The majority of unsafe abortions, or 97%, occurred in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In countries where abortion is completely banned or permitted only to save the woman’s life or preserve her physical health, only 1 in 4 abortions were safe.

• Press release
• Fact sheet: preventing unsafe abortions

Highlights

• WHO scales up response to plague in Madagascar
  October 2017 - WHO is rapidly scaling up its response to an outbreak of plague that has spread to the capital and port towns, infecting more than 100 people in just a few weeks.

• Antimalarial drug resistance in the Greater Mekong Subregion: How concerned should we be?
  September 2017 – A recent letter published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases reported on the presence of a drug-resistant lineage (strain) of malaria parasites in south Viet Nam that is responsible for “alarming rates of failure” of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine, a first-line antimalarial medicine.

• 900 000 vaccines “en route” to Cox’s Bazar to prevent cholera
  September 2017 – The International Coordinating Group ICG on Vaccine Provision will release 900 000 doses of the Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV) from the global stockpile to prevent the spread of cholera among recently arrived vulnerable populations and host communities in areas around Cox’s Bazar.

• Measles no longer endemic in 79% of the WHO European Region
  September 2017 – In the Region, 42 of 53 countries have interrupted endemic transmission of measles, and 37 countries have interrupted endemic transmission of rubella as of the end of 2016. Despite progress towards elimination in many countries and a record low in measles cases for the Region in 2016 (5200), over 11 000 measles cases have been reported so far this year.