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A surveillance analysis of WHO data from January 2024 to February 2026 tracks the clade Ib emergency from declaration to its end, and finds reported spread continued after the emergency was formally lifted.
The infections, detected across six regions between January and early October, had no links to one another. Globally MERS-CoV has caused 2,643 cases and 965 deaths since 2012.
A 28-year-old technician at a plague research institute in Irkutsk died on 2 October. WHO rates the risk low in Russia and very low in Europe, but has asked Russian authorities to clarify the cause of her pneumonia.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 analysis of 31 countries finds the burden climbing, peaking in early adolescence and heavier in women, with population growth the single biggest driver.
The first dedicated Global Burden of Disease analysis of passive smoking finds exposure falling in relative terms but stuck in absolute numbers, and still causing 1.66 million deaths a year — most from heart disease.
A new history of Norway's 1975 ban — one of the WHO's three 'best buys' against alcohol harm — traces how it survived courts, alcohol-free beer and social media, and why pressure to modernise it worries defenders.
A new MMWR comparison of five Ebola outbreaks since 2007 shows the Bundibugyo epidemic in Congo outran West Africa and the 2018 DRC outbreak at the same point, with 2,606 deaths by day 100.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 analysis counts 241 million users worldwide, concentrated in south Asia, with a rising burden of stroke and oral cancer even as prevalence has barely moved.
The PURE study measured airflow obstruction in adults across 25 countries and found most cases had never been labelled, with the largest undiagnosed share in lower-income settings.
Measles incidence edged up and rubella more than doubled across 22 countries in 2023–2024, with outbreaks in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan driving the trend as second-dose coverage stalled.
An observational study across four DR Congo outbreak sites estimates that a third of positive mpox PCR results reflect environmental viral DNA, not infection — and that a stricter cutoff fixes most of it.
The global target is an average of 60 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening. Most adolescents miss it: in 2016, 81% worldwide were insufficiently active, and girls more than boys.
As RTS,S reached more than 2 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, a WHO-coordinated pilot trained about 6,000 health workers to detect and report side-effects that most rollouts assume can already be caught.
WHO and ILO estimate long hours caused 745,000 deaths in one year. The effect is real but modest per person, and clearest for stroke rather than heart disease.
Bangladesh was validated in 2023 as the first country to eliminate visceral leishmaniasis as a public health problem; India is nearing the same threshold, even as post-kala-azar skin cases climb.
WHO flagged a drifted A(H3N2) subclade K in December; the first 2025-2026 effectiveness data, from 1.4 million US veterans, put overall protection near 22% and protection against hospitalisation near 32%.
Trials show both new vaccines raise protective antibody levels in almost everyone. The unsettled question is the live-attenuated shot's safety in the older adults most likely to be hospitalised.
Health authorities converge on a ceiling — under 10% of daily calories, and lower is better still. Large cohorts single out sugary drinks as the form most clearly tied to dying earlier.
A descriptive study using WHO modelled estimates for 2022 put current cigarette use between 1.7% in Ghana and 18.2% in Seychelles, with the male-female gap reaching 36.4 points in Lesotho.
The vaccines and antibody drugs that cut Ebola's death rate work against the Zaire species. None is approved for the Bundibugyo virus now driving the largest Ebola outbreak in Congo's history.
Human cases are a rounding error against the 3.5 million of the 1980s. But 684 animal infections, most of them dogs in Chad, now stand between the programme and eradication.
WHO validated Bhutan's elimination of dog-transmitted human rabies, a disease almost always fatal once symptoms appear. The country has recorded zero such deaths since June 2023.
WHO validated Timor-Leste's elimination of trachoma, the last suspected focus in its South-East Asia Region. A 2025 survey of 4,949 young children found no transmission requiring intervention.
Ervebo was licensed against Zaire ebolavirus. WHO says it is not known whether it protects against Bundibugyo virus in humans — which is why a trial is running alongside the wider rollout.
WHO's latest update records 1,129 more confirmed cases in twelve days and a case fatality ratio of 48.1%. Transmission is now confined to Congo, across 60 health zones in six provinces.
OSHA and NIOSH use different rules for how fast allowable exposure falls as sound gets louder. WHO's venue standard permits an average of 100 decibels. The headline 'one billion at risk' figure is a modelled range.
The emergency funding is meant to keep trauma care, disease surveillance and maternal care running in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, atop a regional appeal only 37% funded.
The country became the first in its region to receive shipments through a WHO-backed platform supplying 46 essential cancer drugs — refugees included, at no cost.
The Bundibugyo virus epidemic is now the largest Ebola outbreak in Congo's history. WHO's emergency committee met again this week; MSF says the response still isn't reaching people fast enough.
A case-control study by MSF's Epicentre and WHO put NmCV-5's adjusted effectiveness at 92% against meningococcal meningitis after 2024 campaigns in Niger — on a small sample of 17 confirmed cases.
A dose-response meta-analysis of 94 cohorts and more than 30 million people found the steepest part of the curve sits between zero and the recommended weekly dose, with small and uncertain gains above double it.
Pooling the trials, one- and two-dose HPV schedules produced lower antibody titres than three doses but still cut persistent infection — with the usual caveat about surrogate endpoints.
A community study of 2,340 residents, run after the conflict that wrecked the region's health system, found presumptive tuberculosis above 10% in both town and countryside.
The seventh session on the pathogen-sharing annex ran nearly twice as long as previous rounds. WHO says the text is narrowing. A new deadline, set in May, gives them until next year.
Two months after the emergency declaration, confirmed cases in DRC have passed 2,100 and spread to 46 health zones. There is still no approved vaccine or treatment — but patients are now being enrolled in one.
WHO and UNICEF estimates put DTP3 coverage at 85% for a second year running. Yellow fever protection sits at 53% in at-risk countries and HPV at 33% in girls, both far below target.
A peer-reviewed account traces the mass screening and tsetse-fly control that cut gambiense sleeping sickness below one case per 10,000 in endemic areas — the threshold WHO validated in January 2025.
Thirteen cases and three deaths, tracked across 33 countries and territories. The final determination rested on one thing: 653 contacts completing 42 days of monitoring without a single new case.
A WHO global update logged 79 human infections in the Americas and 16 confirmed cases in Africa by late May, with the virus surfacing in areas long considered free of it.
A single patient is on ventilatory support in Kozhikode. WHO says 104 contacts are being monitored and the source of infection has not been identified.
Five weeks into the Bundibugyo virus emergency, WHO says some new cases reflect transmission that had gone undetected for weeks — a sign the outbreak may be larger than the count shows.
A Bulletin of the WHO study recorded 168 maternal deaths between October 2023 and June 2024, alongside higher stillbirth, neonatal-death and preterm-birth rates than before the war.
WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on 17 May. By early June, confirmed cases had climbed past 500 and Africa CDC put a price tag on the continental response: $518 million.
Stroke is the world's second-leading cause of death and third-leading cause of disability. The new resolution asks countries to build stroke-ready emergency systems, not just treat risk factors.
The World Health Assembly gave negotiators another year — or a special session later this year — to finish the annex that has to be adopted before the pandemic agreement can open for signature.
Eight confirmed cases, 246 suspected, and 80 suspected deaths in eastern DRC were enough for the Director-General to invoke his highest level of alarm — before convening the emergency committee that usually comes first.
A Lancet evaluation of the RTS,S introduction in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi reports a 13% drop in mortality among vaccine-eligible children — achieved with third-dose coverage of 71% and fourth-dose uptake under 40%.
Five confirmed cases and three deaths, all linked to Andes virus, the only hantavirus known to pass between people. WHO calls the public health risk low but says more cases are possible.
WHO's latest mpox report shows global case counts holding steady, but flags a Sindh province cluster where nearly all deaths were in babies under six months old.
WHO's latest tally puts the 2026 year-to-date count at 58,740 cases and 732 deaths across 22 countries, down sharply from last year except in conflict-affected states.
The FY2027 request would cut global health funding by $4.3 billion and eliminate WHO, PAHO and UNFPA outright. Three weeks later House appropriators proposed a smaller cut.
WHO reports 19,161 suspected cases and 166 deaths in a single month, most in children under five. The country had been close to eliminating the disease.
The patient had spent months in Senegal and was found to carry the poultry-adapted virus alongside tuberculosis. WHO rates the public risk as low and traced no onward spread.
The sixth negotiating round on the WHO Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex was supposed to finish text ahead of May's World Health Assembly. Member states pushed the deadline to late April instead.
The surveillance behind the WHO-verified milestone is now published: no infective blackflies at any monitored site, and no infection among 16,406 children tested.
Products reached 99 countries before recalls began. WHO's first Disease Outbreak News report on the event lists 144 suspected and confirmed illnesses and calls the risk moderate.
In a 20,000-child trial across eight endemic countries, TAK-003 was 61.2% effective against symptomatic dengue and 84.1% against hospitalisation — but protection was narrower in children never previously infected.
WHO's Emergency Committee extended the public health emergency for three more months. Wild poliovirus cases dropped from 99 to 40, while vaccine-derived strains spread to two new countries.
WHO updated all three components for the 2026-2027 northern hemisphere season after subclade K dominated globally, and recommended a new candidate vaccine virus for an H9N2 avian strain.
Negotiators finished a week in Geneva with a plan to streamline the text and consult separately on the hard parts. The treaty cannot open for signature until the annex is adopted.
WHO reports two cases of a monkeypox virus carrying genetic material from both clade Ib and clade IIb. The finding that matters for surveillance is that clade differentiation PCR missed it both times.
The objection turns on a no-treatment arm. WHO says placebo or no-treatment vaccine trials are acceptable only where no proven intervention exists, and here one does.
The patient drank raw date palm sap through most of January. Thirty-five contacts are under monitoring, and the six who developed symptoms have tested negative.
WHO and CDC estimate cases climbed about 20% in a single year, and the number of countries hit by large or disruptive outbreaks jumped from 36 to 57 — while global first-dose coverage stayed flat.
Global oral cholera vaccine supply has roughly doubled since 2022, enough to release 20 million doses for prevention rather than outbreak response. Nearly all of it comes from a single company.
The Lancet Global Health paper that produced this month's headline number also produced a larger one: 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030 if defunding deepens. The distinction matters more than the figure.
WHO was notified on January 26 of the third Nipah outbreak recorded in West Bengal. There is no licensed vaccine or drug, and the source of exposure is still under investigation.
WHO's year-end tally records 614,828 cases across 33 countries. December brought a decline — and the reported figures are known to be a fraction of the true burden.
The Ministry of Health declared the end on January 26, two incubation periods after the last confirmed patient was buried. No vaccine or drug for Marburg is approved anywhere.
Negotiators on the Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex met January 20–22 and reported emerging consensus on parts of the system. The deadline is the World Health Assembly in May.
About 260,000 women died in pregnancy or childbirth in 2023; 37 conflict-affected or fragile countries accounted for 61% of those deaths while holding only a quarter of the world's births.
The year-end immunization summary reports 88% fewer measles deaths since 2000, malaria vaccine in 24 African countries, and 25 years without wild polio in the Western Pacific.
WHO and the World Bank put the global service coverage index at 71, up from 54 in 2000. On current trends it reaches only 74 by 2030.
Negotiators met in Geneva for five days and agreed to come back in January. Until the annex is adopted, the pandemic agreement cannot even open for signature.
WHO's World malaria report counts 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths for 2024. The US$3.9 billion spent was under half the US$9.3 billion the global strategy called for.
The Bulape outbreak in Kasai Province ended 88 days after it was declared, with a case fatality ratio above 70% and nearly 48,000 people vaccinated.
The recommendations are conditional, cover three drugs, and come with a projection that fewer than one in ten people who could benefit will have access by 2030.
WHO has graded the regional resurgence a level 2 emergency. Only 5.7% of the 20,412 suspected cases were laboratory-confirmed, and the antitoxin that prevents most deaths is in global short supply.
New EGASP surveillance data released for World AMR Awareness Week show cefixime resistance up from 1.7% to 11% and ciprofloxacin resistance at 95% across 12 reporting countries.
Six laboratory-confirmed cases and three probable ones have been reported from Jinka town. All deaths involved unsupervised burials — the step in the chain that historically turns a cluster into an outbreak.
Intimate partner violence has declined by 0.2% a year over two decades. The report also produces the first national and regional estimates of sexual violence by someone other than a partner.
IARC and WHO put five modules on screening and precancer management online. The 90-70-90 targets they support depend on health workers who can act on a positive test.
A WHO and Brazil special report released on the summit's Health Day says extreme heat kills over 540,000 people a year and that health facilities face 41% higher weather-damage risk than in 1990.
The 27 recommendations cover monitoring, diet and medication for type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes. WHO had guidance on diabetes and guidance on pregnancy, but never on the two together.
WHO's Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 counts 10.7 million people ill and over 1.2 million dead last year. Available funding is US$5.9 billion against a US$22 billion annual target.
WHO validated Egypt as the 27th country to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem. Its programme began in 2002; the disease still blinds or impairs about 1.9 million people elsewhere.
A TB vaccine financing plan, six target product profiles for children's cancer drugs, and a paediatric research agenda. All three are attempts to specify a product before a market decides to build it.
WHO reports 404 confirmed human cases across the two countries in six weeks. The case fatality ratio is 30% in Mauritania and 7.8% in Senegal — a gap that says more about detection than about the virus.
The agency stops short of calling 2025 a global surge. Its own regional tables show why: the Americas and the Indian Ocean drove the total while the Philippines and Malaysia reported fewer cases than last year.
Three of the four cases drank raw date palm sap in the usual December-April window. The fourth, a child who fell ill in August, did not — and the source remains under investigation.
The 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations took effect in September 2025, adding a 'pandemic emergency' tier. The United States formally rejected them.
Sequencing points to a fresh spillover from wildlife rather than a resurgence of the province's earlier outbreaks. Four of the dead are health-care workers.
Nine genetically linked virus isolates from seven environmental sites triggered the declaration. Sequencing traced the lineage back to a paralysis case reported in December 2024.
WHO counted 409,222 cases and 4,738 deaths across 31 countries by 17 August. The divergence between the two trends is the finding, and it points at case management, not transmission.
Kerala's ninth Nipah outbreak since 2018 produced four unlinked cases between April and July, suggesting separate spillovers from bats rather than a chain of human transmission.
The guidelines pair the new injectable with a second, quieter recommendation: use simplified rapid diagnostic testing to start and continue long-acting PrEP, rather than more complex assays.
Five cutaneous anthrax cases, one fatal, were confirmed in Mukdahan province in May 2025, all tied to the home slaughter of infected cows — a textbook zoonotic spillover.
The World Health Assembly approved US$6.2 billion for 2026-2027 after trimming the base to US$4.27 billion. The notified US withdrawal cut the assessments available for it by US$311.1 million.
Two healthy children in Lae tested positive for cVDPV2 genetically linked to an Indonesian outbreak, in a country where coverage for a third oral polio dose was 44% in 2024.
The final analysis of a 28,130-child trial found roughly 78% efficacy over more than four years, evidence that underpins WHO's push to roll the conjugate vaccine out in endemic countries.