WHO
1 in 6 affected by infertility around the world: WHO report
A large number of people are affected by infertility in their lifetime, according to a new report published today (April 04, 2023) by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Around 17.5% of the adult population – roughly 1 in 6 worldwide – experience infertility, showing the urgent need to increase access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need.
The new estimates show limited variation in the prevalence of infertility between regions.
The rates are comparable for high-, middle- and low-income countries, indicating that this is a major health challenge globally.
Read More: Every 2 minutes a woman dies due to pregnancy or childbirth: UN agencies
Lifetime prevalence was 17.8% in high-income countries and 16.5% in low- and middle-income countries.
“The report reveals an important truth – infertility does not discriminate,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General at WHO.
“The sheer proportion of people affected shows the need to widen access to fertility care and ensure this issue is no longer sidelined in health research and policy, so that safe, effective, and affordable ways to attain parenthood are available for those who seek it,” he said.
Infertility is a condition of the male or female reproductive system, defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.
Read More: Unintended pregnancies surge amid Covid-19
It can cause significant distress and stigma, affecting people’s mental and psychosocial well-being.
Despite the magnitude of the issue, solutions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infertility – including assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) – remain underfunded and inaccessible to many due to high costs, social stigma and limited availability.
At present, in most countries, fertility treatments are largely funded out of pocket – often resulting in devastating financial costs. People in the poorest countries spend a greater proportion of their income on fertility care compared to people in wealthier countries.
High costs frequently prevent people from accessing infertility treatments or alternatively, can catapult them into poverty as a consequence of seeking care.
Read More: French conservatives protest bill allowing IVF for lesbians
“Millions of people face catastrophic healthcare costs after seeking treatment for infertility, making this a major equity issue and all too often, a medical poverty trap for those affected,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research at WHO, including the United Nations’ Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP).
“Better policies and public financing can significantly improve access to treatment and protect poorer households from falling into poverty as a result,” he observed.
While the new report shows convincing evidence of the high global prevalence of infertility, it highlights a persistent lack of data in many countries and some regions.
The WHO report calls for greater availability of national data on infertility disaggregated by age and by cause to help with quantifying infertility, as well as knowing who needs fertility care and how risks can be reduced.
Read More: Ensure reproductive health rights of all: UN chief
Dhaka air world’s most polluted this morning
Dhaka topped the list of cities around the world with the worst air quality this morning (March 19, 2023).
With an air quality index (AQI) score of 196 at 9:20 am today, Dhaka ranked first among cities with the most polluted air. The air was classified as ‘unhealthy’.
South Korea’s Incheon and Myanmar’s Yangon occupied the second and third spots on the list, with AQI scores of 175 and 173.
An AQI between 151 and 200 is considered ‘unhealthy’ while 201–300 is ‘‘very unhealthy’, and 301–400 is 'hazardous', posing severe health risks to residents.
Read more: River pollution: Artists take to unique protest in Habiganj
The AQI, an index for reporting daily air quality, informs people how clean or polluted the air of a certain city is and what associated health effects might be a concern for them.
The AQI in Bangladesh is based on five pollutants: particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), NO2, CO, SO2, and ozone.
Dhaka has long been grappling with air pollution issues. Its air quality usually turns unhealthy in winter and improves during the monsoon.
As per World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year, mainly due to increased mortality from stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections.
Read More: Govt committed to doing all it can to defeat pollution: Environment Minister
Every 2 minutes a woman dies due to pregnancy or childbirth: UN agencies
Every two minutes, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, according to the latest estimates released today in a report by United Nations (UN) agencies.
The report, ‘Trends in maternal mortality’, reveals alarming setbacks for women’s health over recent years, as maternal deaths either increased or stagnated in nearly all regions of the world.
“While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world who lack access to high quality, respectful health care,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
“These new statistics reveal the urgent need to ensure every woman and girl has access to critical health services before, during and after childbirth, and that they can fully exercise their reproductive rights,” he added.
Read More: UNICEF lauds Bangladesh’ breakthrough to accelerate universal birth registration
The report, which tracks maternal deaths nationally, regionally and globally from 2000 to 2020, shows there were an estimated 287,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2020. This marks only a slight decrease from 309,000 in 2016 when the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into effect. While the report presents some significant progress in reducing maternal deaths between 2000 and 2015, gains largely stalled, or in some cases even reversed, after this point.
In two of the eight UN regions – Europe and Northern America, and Latin America and the Caribbean – the maternal mortality rate increased from 2016 to 2020, by 17% and 15% respectively. Elsewhere, the rate stagnated.
The report notes, however, that progress is possible.
For example, two regions – Australia and New Zealand, and Central and Southern Asia – experienced significant declines (by 35% and 16% respectively) in their maternal mortality rates during the same period, as did 31 countries across the world.
Read More: Majority of children with disabilities are not enrolled in any formal education: Survey
“For millions of families, the miracle of childbirth is marred by the tragedy of maternal deaths,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“No mother should have to fear for her life while bringing a baby into the world, especially when the knowledge and tools to treat common complications exist. Equity in healthcare gives every mother, no matter who they are or where they are, a fair chance at a safe delivery and a healthy future with their family.”
In total numbers, maternal deaths continue to be largely concentrated in the poorest parts of the world and in countries affected by conflict. In 2020, about 70% of all maternal deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa.
In nine countries facing severe humanitarian crises, maternal mortality rates were more than double the world average (551 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 223 globally).
Read More: More Rohingya female teachers need training for increasing literacy among their community
“This report provides yet another stark reminder of the urgent need to double down on our commitment to women and adolescent health,” said Juan Pablo Uribe, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, and Director of the Global Financing Facility.
“With immediate action, more investments in primary health care and stronger, more resilient health systems, we can save lives, improve health and well-being, and advance the rights of and opportunities for women and adolescents.”
Severe bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from unsafe abortion, and underlying conditions that can be aggravated by pregnancy (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria) are the leading causes of maternal deaths. These are all largely preventable and treatable with access to high-quality and respectful healthcare.
Community-centered primary health care can meet the needs of women, children and adolescents and enable equitable access to critical services such as assisted births and pre- and postnatal care, childhood vaccinations, nutrition and family planning. However, underfunding of primary health care systems, a lack of trained health care workers, and weak supply chains for medical products are threatening progress.
Read More: When classrooms are child-friendly and safe, children are motivated to learn, research shows
Roughly a third of women do not have even four of the recommended eight antenatal checks or receive essential postnatal care, while some 270 million women lack access to modern family planning methods.
Exercising control over their reproductive health – particularly decisions about if and when to have children – is critical to ensure that women can plan and space childbearing and protect their health. Inequities related to income, education, race or ethnicity further increase risks for marginalized pregnant women, who have the least access to essential maternity care but are most likely to experience underlying health problems in pregnancy.
"It is unacceptable that so many women continue to die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. Over 280,000 fatalities in a single year is unconscionable,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.
“We can and must do better by urgently investing in family planning and filling the global shortage of 900,000 midwives so that every woman can get the lifesaving care she needs. We have the tools, knowledge and resources to end preventable maternal deaths; what we need now is the political will."
Read More: Bangladesh ranks top among the countries to receive free Covid vaccine from WHO: Health minister
The COVID-19 pandemic may have further held back progress on maternal health. Noting the current data series ends in 2020, more data will be needed to show the true impacts of the pandemic on maternal deaths. However, COVID-19 infections can increase risks during pregnancy, so countries should take action to ensure pregnant women and those planning pregnancies have access to COVID-19 vaccines and effective antenatal care.
“Reducing maternal mortality remains one of the most pressing global health challenges,” said John Wilmoth, Director of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
“Ending preventable maternal deaths and providing universal access to quality maternal health care require sustained national and international efforts and unwavering commitments, particularly for the most vulnerable populations. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that every mother, everywhere, survives childbirth, so that she and her children can thrive."
The report reveals that the world must significantly accelerate progress to meet global targets for reducing maternal deaths, or risk the lives of over 1 million more women by 2030.
Read More: There are more than 2.3 million cases of breast cancer that occur each year: WHO
WHO calls for action to protect children from contaminated medicines
The UN health agency has released an urgent call to action to countries to prevent, detect and respond to incidents of substandard and falsified medical products.
Over the past four months, countries have reported several incidents of over-the-counter cough syrups for children with confirmed or suspected contamination with high levels of diethylene glycol (DEG) and ethylene glycol (EG).
The cases are from at least seven countries, associated with more than 300 fatalities in three of these countries. Most are young children under the age of five. These contaminants are toxic chemicals used as industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that can be fatal even in small amounts, and should never be found in medicines.
Based on country reports, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued three global medical alerts addressing these incidents. Medical Product Alert N°6/2022 on October 5, 2022, focused on the outbreak in the Gambia, Medical Product Alert N°7/2022 on November 6, 2022, focused on Indonesia, and Medical Product Alert No1/2023 on January 11, 2023, focused on Uzbekistan.
The WHO's medical product alerts were rapidly disseminated to the national health authorities of all of its 194 member states. These medical product alerts requested included the detection and removal of contaminated medicines from circulation in the markets, increased surveillance and diligence within the supply chains of countries and regions likely to be affected, immediate notification to the WHO if these substandard products are discovered in-country; and otherwise inform the public of the dangers and toxic effects of the substandard medicines at issue.
Since these are not isolated incidents, the WHO called on various key stakeholders engaged in the medical supply chain to take immediate and coordinated action.
The UN health agency urged regulators and governments to detect and remove from circulation in their respective markets substandard medical products that have been identified in the WHO medical alerts referred to above as potential causes of death and disease.
Read more: Policies must to stop misuse, overuse of antibiotics: Health Minister
The WHO also called on them to ensure that all medical products in their respective markets are approved for sale by competent authorities and obtainable from authorised/licenced suppliers; assign appropriate resources to improve and increase risk-based inspections of manufacturing sites within their jurisdiction following international norms and standards.
The UN health agency urged medicine manufacturers to only buy pharmaceutical grade excipients from qualified and bona fide suppliers; conduct comprehensive testing upon receipt of supplies and before use in the manufacture of finished products.
WHO 'continues to urge' China to share more data amid Covid surge
The UN health agency has "continued to urge China" to share more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalisations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing in the wake of a Covid surge in the East Asian country.
"The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about the risk to life in the world's most populous country and reiterated the importance of stepping up vaccination coverage, including booster doses," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said recently in his first online briefing for the year.
"With circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming – as I said last week it is understandable that some countries are taking steps they believe will protect their citizens," he added.
Several countries, including the US, have announced new Covid testing requirements for travellers from China to gain domestic entry, amid concerns over the spread of the latest variants.
WHO Emergencies Director Dr Mike Ryan said: "We know there are difficulties in all countries very often in recording hospital releases, admissions and use of ICU (intensive care unit) facilities."
"We believe that the current numbers being published from China underrepresents the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths."
Also Read: Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information?
WHO has held high-level meetings with Chinese authorities over the past week to discuss the rise in cases and hospitalisations.
The UN agency's Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) also met with Chinese experts to discuss the situation.
During that meeting, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention presented data from what they described as imported and locally acquired coronavirus infections.
The analysis showed that most of the viruses circulating in the country are of two Omicron lineages, BA.5.2 and BF.7, which accounted for 97.5 percent of all local infections, as well as a few other known Omicron sublineages.
"These variants are known and have been circulating in other countries, and at present no new variant has been reported by the China CDC," the TAG-VE said in a statement on Wednesday.
So far, 773 sequences from mainland China have been submitted to the virus database operated by the global science initiative, GISAID.
Most, 564, were collected after December 1. Of this number, only 95 are labelled as locally acquired cases, while 187 are imported and 261 "do not have this information provided."
The majority of the locally acquired cases, 95 percent, belong to the two Omicron lineages.
"This is in line with genomes from travellers from China submitted to the GISAID EpiCoV database by other countries. No new variant or mutation of known significance is noted in the publicly available sequence data," the statement said.
Tedros said the pandemic is now in its fourth year, and despite progress, it is still a threat to health, economies, and societies.
"We are really concerned about the current Covid-19 epidemiological picture, with both intense transmission in several parts of the world and a recombinant sub-variant spreading quickly," he said.
Covid was on the decline for most of 2021, Tedros added, citing factors such as increased vaccinations worldwide and the identification of new lifesaving antivirals.
However, there are still major inequities in access to testing, treatment and vaccination.
"Every week, approximately 10,000 people die of Covid-19, that we are aware of. The true toll is likely much higher," he said.
Also, the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is on the rise in the US and Europe and has been identified in nearly 30 countries.
XBB.1.5 was initially detected in October 2022. It is the most transmissible subvariant yet, according to Dr Maria Van Kherkove, the WHO technical lead for Covid.
"We do expect further waves of infection around the world, but that doesn't have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures continue to work," she said.
Meanwhile, the TAG-VE experts are also working on a related risk assessment that should be published in the coming days.
Dr Van Kherkove emphasised the importance of continued Covid surveillance around the world to track known subvariants that are in circulation.
Last month, more than 13 million cases of the disease were reported, though the WHO believes the toll is higher.
"But more concerning, we've had a 15 percent increase in deaths in the last month and again, we know that that is an underestimate because there are delays in reporting, and with the holiday period and with mixing, those trends are expected to continue," Dr Van Kherkove said.
Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information?
As COVID-19 rips through China, other countries and the World Health Organization are calling on its government to share more comprehensive data on the outbreak. Some even say many of the numbers it's reporting are meaningless.
Without basic data like the number of deaths, infections and severe cases, governments elsewhere have instituted virus testing requirements for travelers from China. Beijing has said the measures aren't science-based and threatened countermeasures.
Of greatest concern is whether new variants will emerge from the mass infection unfolding in China and spread to other countries. The delta and omicron variants developed in places that also had large outbreaks, which can be a breeding ground for new variants.
Read More: WHO 'continues to urge' China to share more data amid Covid surge
Here's a look at what's going on with China's COVID-19 data:
WHAT IS CHINA SHARING AND NOT SHARING?
Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new cases, severe cases and deaths, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-related deaths.
China is most certainly doing their own sampling studies but just not sharing them, said Ray Yip, who founded the U.S. Centers for Disease Control office in China.
The nationwide tally for Thursday was 9,548 new cases and five deaths, but some local governments are releasing much higher estimates just for their jurisdictions. Zhejiang, a province on the east coast, said Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day.
If a variant emerges in an outbreak, it's found through genetic sequencing of the virus.
Since the pandemic started, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That's only 0.04% of its reported number of cases — a rate more than 100 times less than the United States and nearly four times less than neighboring Mongolia.
Read more: Beijing threatens response to ‘unacceptable’ virus measures
WHAT IS KNOWN AND WHAT CAN BE FIGURED OUT?
So far, no new variants have shown up in the sequences shared by China. The versions fueling infections in China “closely resemble” those that have been seen in other parts of the world since July, GISAID said. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College of Vellore in India, agreed, saying there wasn’t anything particularly worrisome in the data so far.
That hasn't stopped at least 10 countries — including the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, the U.K., France, Spain and Italy — from announcing virus testing requirements for passengers from China. The European Union strongly encouraged all its member states to do so this week.
Health officials have defended the testing as a surveillance measure that helps fill an information gap from China. This means countries can get a read on any changes in the virus through testing, even if they don’t have complete data from China.
“We don’t need China to study that, all we have to do is to test all the people coming out of China,” said Yip, the former public health official.
Canada and Belgium said they will look for viral particles in wastewater on planes arriving from China.
“It is like an early warning system for authorities to anticipate whether there’s a surge of infections coming in,” said Dr. Khoo Yoong Khean, a scientific officer at the Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness in Singapore.
Read More: EU, Beijing heading for collision over China’s COVID crisis
IS CHINA SHARING ENOUGH INFORMATION?
Chinese officials have repeatedly said they are sharing information, pointing to the sequences given to GISAID and meetings with the WHO.
But WHO officials have repeatedly asked for more — not just on genetic sequencing but also on hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern this week about the risk to life in China.
“Data remains essential for WHO to carry out regular, rapid and robust risk assessments of the global situation,” the head of the U.N. health agency said.
The Chinese government often holds information from its own public, particularly anything that reflects negatively on the ruling Communist Party. State media have shied away from the dire reports of a spike in cremations and people racing from hospital to hospital to try to get treatment as the health system reaches capacity. Government officials have accused foreign media of hyping the situation.
Khoo, noting that South Africa’s early warning about omicron led to bans on travelers from the country, said there is a need to foster an environment where countries can share data without fear of repercussions.
Read More: Lack of info on China’s COVID-19 surge stirs global concern
Reports of severe COVID in China are "extremely concerning", WHO
The head of the World Health Organization said the agency is “very concerned” about rising reports of severe coronavirus disease across China after the country largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy, warning that its lagging vaccination rate could result in large numbers of vulnerable people getting infected.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the U.N. agency needs more information on COVID-19 severity in China, particularly regarding hospital and intensive care unit admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground.”
“WHO is very concerned over the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of severe disease,” Tedros said. He added that while COVID deaths have dropped more than 90% since their global peak, there were still too many uncertainties about the virus to conclude that the pandemic is over.
Some scientists have warned that the unchecked spread of COVID-19 in China could spur the emergence of new variants, which might unravel progress made globally to contain the pandemic.
“Vaccination is the exit strategy from omicron,” WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said.
Ryan said the explosive surge of cases in China was not exclusively due to the lifting of many of the country’s restrictive policies and that it was impossible to stop transmission of omicron, the most highly infectious variant yet seen of COVID-19.
Also read: China limits how it defines COVID deaths in official count
He said vaccination rates among people over age 60 in China lagged behind many other countries and that the efficacy of the Chinese-made vaccines was about 50%.
“That’s just not adequate protection in a population as large as China, with so many vulnerable people,” Ryan said. He added that while China has dramatically increased its capacity to vaccinate people in recent weeks, it’s unclear whether that will be enough.
To date, China has declined to authorize Western-made messenger RNA vaccines, which have proven to be more effective than its locally made shots. Beijing did agree to allow a shipment of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine to be imported, for Germans living in China.
“The question remains whether or not enough vaccination can be done in the coming week or two weeks that will actually blunt the impact of the second wave and the burden on the health system,” Ryan said.
Like Tedros, he said WHO had insufficient information about the extent of severe disease and hospitalization, but he noted that nearly all countries overwhelmed by COVID-19 had struggled to share such real-time data.
Ryan also suggested China’s definition of COVID deaths was too narrow, saying the country was limiting it to people who have suffered respiratory failure.
“People who die of COVID die from many different (organ) systems’ failures, given the severity of infection,” Ryan said. “So limiting a diagnosis of death from COVID to someone with a COVID positive test and respiratory failure will very much underestimate the true death toll associated with COVID.”
Countries such as Britain, for example, define any COVID death as someone who has died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus.
Globally, nearly every country has grappled with how to count COVID deaths, and official numbers are believed to be a major underestimate. In May, WHO estimated there were nearly 15 million coronavirus deaths worldwide, more than double the official toll of 6 million.
Bangladesh built fast response capabilities for influenza, other respiratory infection using lessons learned from Covid-19: WHO
Bangladesh has used lessons learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic to build emergency preparedness capacities by training rapid response teams that can be deployed during any public health event due to influenza or any other respiratory pathogen.
In total, more than 200 rapid response team members have been trained, including epidemiologists, clinicians, laboratory technicians, communication officers, anthropologists, logisticians, psychosocial support experts, data managers, and environmental experts, among others, said a WHO media release issued on Tuesday.
Read: Over 50% of life-threatening bacterial infections becoming resistant to treatment: WHO
For more than two years, responding to the Covid-19 pandemic has been a live exercise in rapid response for these trainees, it said.
The rapid response trainings gave participants a chance to share their experiences and review lessons learnt so that they might be better prepared to tackle future outbreaks of influenza or other respiratory pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential.
The trainings were developed and delivered by a group of epidemiologists and laboratory scientists from the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) with direct field experiences in managing Covid-19, influenza and other respiratory pathogens.
Read: Scientists grow human brain tissue in rats to study diseases
Key topics in the training package that were built on lessons learnt during the pandemic included:
- How to leverage the existing influenza surveillance system to integrate monitoring of other respiratory pathogens.
- How to establish an early warning and alert system and why it’s important.
- How to use risk communications and community mobilization in outbreak response.
- How to plan, prepare and carry out outbreak investigations.
- How to ensure biosafety and why it’s important; and likely challenges and how to overcome them.
Read: Food, Drinks during Dengue: What to consume, what to avoid
During 2022, supported by the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Partnership Contribution, twelve groups of rapid response personnel successfully completed the training and are ready for deployment during the next public health event due to influenza or any other respiratory pathogen.
Over 50% of life-threatening bacterial infections becoming resistant to treatment: WHO
Over 50 percent of life-threatening bacterial infections are becoming resistant to treatment, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said in its new report.
Also, high levels of resistance to treatment are reported in bacteria frequently causing bloodstream infections in hospitals, according to the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System report, published Friday, based on 2020 data from 87 countries.
Antimicrobial resistance undermines modern medicine and puts millions of lives at risk, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Within the context of national testing coverage, the report, for the first time, analyses antimicrobial resistance (AMR) rates, tracking trends in 27 countries since 2017.
It reveals high levels of bacteria resistance, frequently causing life-threatening bloodstream infections in hospitals, such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp, which require treatment with last-resort antibiotics, such as carbapenems.
However, eight percent of those infections caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae were resistant to carbapenems, increasing the risk of death.
Bacterial infections are becoming increasingly resistant to treatments, with over 60 percent of Neisseria gonorrhoea infections, a common sexually transmitted disease, showing resistance to ciprofloxacin, one of the most widely used oral antibacterials.
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And over 20 percent of E.coli isolates, the most common pathogen in urinary tract infections, were resistant to ampicillin and co-trimoxazole, first-line drugs, as well as second-line treatments known as fluoroquinolones.
Although most antimicrobial resistance trends have remained stable over the past four years, bloodstream infections due to resistant E.coli, Salmonella, and gonorrhoea infections have jumped by at least 15 percent compared to 2017 rates.
More research is needed to discover why AMR has increased and the extent to which infections are related to hospitalisations and antibiotic treatments during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the UN health agency.
The pandemic also meant that several countries were unable to report data for 2020, it added."To truly understand the extent of the global threat and mount an effective public health response to AMR, we must scale up microbiology testing and provide quality-assured data across all countries, not just wealthier ones," Tedros said.
New analyses show that countries with lower testing coverage – mostly low and middle-income countries (LMICs) – are more likely to report significantly higher AMR rates for "bug-drug" combinations.
This may be partly because only a limited number of referral hospitals in many LMICs provide data for the WHO report.
Read: Health must be at the centre in COP27 climate change negotiations: WHO
These hospitals often care for the sickest patients who may have received previous antibiotic treatment.
Meanwhile, in terms of antibiotic consumption, 65 percent of 27 reporting countries met the WHO's target of ensuring that at least 60 percent of antimicrobials are first or second-line treatments.
"These 'ACCESS' antibiotics are effective in a wide range of infections with a relatively low risk of creating resistance. However, insufficient testing coverage and weak laboratory capacity, particularly in LMICs, make AMR rates difficult to interpret," the UN agency said.
7.1 million Bangladeshis displaced by climate change in 2022: WHO
With an aim to support countries and territories to build professional competence and capacity to adequately address refugee and migrant health issues, the World Health Organization (WHO) is organising the third edition of its annual Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health in Dhaka with a focus on capacity-building.
Over five days, from November 28 to December 2, policymakers, UN partner agencies, academia, members of civil society, and stakeholders at the Global School will exchange knowledge and experiences to address key elements of capacity-building.
The e-learning hybrid event hosted by the Ministry of Health, Bangladesh will be streamed globally.
Read more: COP27: How will UN climate deal on loss and damage work?
Globally, one in eight or over one billion people today are migrants with 281 million international migrants and many million individuals who are stateless, WHO said.
Climate change, rising inequality, conflicts, trade, and population growth are accelerating these trends.
The health workforce has a vital role in providing for the health rights and needs of refugees and migrants.
Read more: Climate Change: UN, Bangladesh to strengthen cooperation
“Migration and displacement can have deep and long-lasting impacts on physical and mental health and well-being, and cultural and linguistic differences, financial barriers, stigma and discrimination can all hamper access to health services for refugees and migrants,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General on Monday.
“Health workers have a crucial role in helping to overcome these barriers. The WHO Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health is a valuable resource for building the capacity of health workers to better serve refugees and migrants.”
While not all refugees and migrants are vulnerable, often they are, due to an array of determinants, from xenophobia and discrimination to poor living, housing, and working conditions, and inadequate access to health services that are people-centered and which are sensitive to refugee and migrant health needs.
Read More: Time running out for climate negotiators over loss and damage
“Human right to health is a right that extends to all people everywhere, especially refugees and migrants. Because to be truly respected, protected and fulfilled, a right must be fully enjoyed by the most marginalized and vulnerable – those at risk of or who are already being left behind, which often includes people on the move,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia addressing the participants.
Held in a different location each year, the Global School aims to leverage the learnings and experiences of countries in close collaboration with WHO and governments.
This year, over 7.1 million Bangladeshis were displaced by climate change, a number that could reach 13.3 million by 2050, according to WHO.
Read More: UN climate talks drag into extra time with scant progress
Since 1978, the country has also witnessed three major influxes of forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals totalling more than one million people each with unique medical needs and housed in one of the world’s largest and most densely populated camps in Cox’s Bazar.
“Not only has Bangladesh provided them access to free health care – including, most recently, COVID-19 vaccines – but it has also made concerted efforts to address key social, economic, environmental, and legal vulnerabilities,” said the Regional Director.
“The yearly Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health is a flagship of the WHO Health and Migration Programme and an opportunity to strengthen the strategic and operational collaboration with Regional and country offices on refugee and migrant health towards the implementation of the Global Action Plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants 2019-2023 (GAP),” said Dr Santino Severoni, Director of the Health and Migration Programme.
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Open to all audiences, the Global School aims to reach a diverse audience of policy makers, health sector managers, and officers working at different levels within Ministries of Health.
Researchers, University students, nongovernmental agencies, youth representatives and journalists also participate.
“From each context to the next, no challenge is the same, nor will there be the solution. But of critical need to all countries and health systems is a health workforce that is well-trained, culturally sensitive and competent, and which is sensitive to the needs of refugees and migrants, their languages and unique health problems,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh.
Read More: EU shakes up climate talks with surprise disaster fund offer