WHO
World Health Day: WHO calls for fairer, healthier world post-COVID-19
COVID-19 has unfairly impacted some people more harshly than others, exacerbating existing inequities in health and welfare within and between countries, said the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday.
For World Health Day, 7 April 2021, the World Health Organization is therefore issuing five calls for urgent action to improve health for all people.
Within countries, illness and death from COVID-19 have been higher among groups who face discrimination, poverty, social exclusion, and adverse daily living and working conditions - including humanitarian crises.
The pandemic is estimated to have driven between 119 and 124 million more people into extreme poverty last year.
And there is convincing evidence that it has widened gender gaps in employment, with women exiting the labour force in greater numbers than men over the past 12 months.
Also read: 36 countries yet to get Covid jabs: WHO
These inequities in people’s living conditions, health services, and access to power, money and resources are long-standing.
The result: under-5 mortality rates among children from the poorest households are double that of children from the richest households.
Life expectancy for people in low-income countries is 16 years lower than for people in high-income countries. For example, 9 out of 10 deaths globally from cervical cancer occur in low- and middle-income countries.
But as countries continue to fight the pandemic, a unique opportunity emerges to build back better for a fairer, healthier world by implementing existing commitments, resolutions, and agreements while also making new and bold commitments.
Also read: Share Covid jabs out of self-interest: WHO
"The COVID-19 pandemic has thrived amid the inequalities in our societies and the gaps in our health systems," says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “It is vital for all governments to invest in strengthening their health services and to remove the barriers that prevent so many people from using them, so more people have the chance to live healthy lives.”
WHO is therefore issuing five calls for action:
Accelerate equitable access to COVID-19 technologies between and within countries
Safe and effective vaccines have been developed and approved at record speed. The challenge now is to ensure that they are available to everyone who needs them. Key here will be additional support to COVAX, the vaccine pillar in the ACT-Accelerator, which hopes to have reached 100 countries and economies in the coming days.
But vaccines alone will not overcome COVID-19. Commodities such as medical oxygen and personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as reliable diagnostic tests and medicines are also vital. So are strong mechanisms to fairly distribute all these products within national borders.
The ACT-Accelerator aims to establish testing and treatments for hundreds of millions of people in low and middle-income countries who would otherwise miss out. But it still requires USD22.1 billion to deliver these vital tools where they are so desperately needed.
Invest in primary health care
At least half of the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services; more than 800 million people spend at least 10% of their household income on health care, and out of pocket expenses drive almost 100 million people into poverty each year.
As countries move forward post-COVID-19, it will be vital to avoid cuts in public spending on health and other social sectors. Such cuts are likely to increase hardship among already disadvantaged groups, weaken health system performance, increase health risks, add to fiscal pressure in the future and undermine development gains.
Instead, governments should meet WHO’s recommended target of spending an additional 1% of GDP on primary health care (PHC). Evidence reveals that PHC-oriented health systems have consistently produced better health outcomes, enhanced equity, and improved efficiency. Scaling up PHC interventions across low- and middle-income countries could save 60 million lives and increase average life expectancy by 3.7 years by 2030.
Governments must also reduce the global shortfall of 18 million health workers needed to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030. This includes creating at least 10 million additional full-time jobs globally and strengthening gender equality efforts. Women deliver most of the world’s health and social care, representing up to 70% of all health and care workers, but they are denied equal opportunities to lead it. Key solutions include equal pay to reduce the gender pay gap and recognizing unpaid health care work by women.
Prioritize health and social protection
In many countries, the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, through loss of jobs, increases in poverty, disruptions to education, and threats to nutrition, have exceeded the public health impact of the virus.
Some countries have already put in place expanded social protection schemes to mitigate these negative impacts of wider social hardship and started a dialogue on how to continue providing support to the communities and people in the future.
But many face challenges in finding the resources for concrete action. It will be vital to ensure that these precious investments have the biggest impact on those in greatest need, and that disadvantaged communities are engaged in planning and implementing programmes.
Build safe, healthy and inclusive neighbourhoods
City leaders have often been powerful champions for improving health - for example, by improving transport systems and water and sanitation facilities.
But too often, the lack of basic social services for some communities traps them in a spiral of sickness and insecurity. Access to healthy housing, in safe neighbourhoods, with adequate educational and recreational amenities, is key to achieving health for all.
Meanwhile, 80 per cent of the world's population living in extreme poverty are in rural areas. Today, 8 out of 10 people who lack basic drinking water services live in rural areas, as do 7 out of 10 people who lack basic sanitation services.
It will be important to intensify efforts to reach rural communities with health and other basic social services (including water and sanitation). These communities also urgently need increased economic investment in sustainable livelihoods and better access to digital technologies.
Strengthen data and health information systems
Increasing the availability of timely, high-quality data that is disaggregated by sex, wealth, education, ethnicity, race, gender and place of residence is key to working out where inequities exist, and addressing them. Health inequality monitoring should be an integral part of all national health information systems.
A recent WHO global assessment shows that only 51% of countries have included data disaggregation in their published national health statistics reports.
The health status of these diverse groups is often masked when national averages are used. Moreover, it is often those who are made vulnerable, poor or discriminated against, who are the most likely to be missing from the data entirely.
"Now is the time to invest in health as a motor of development," said Dr Tedros. “We do not need to choose between improving public health, building sustainable societies, ensuring food security and adequate nutrition, tacking climate change and having thriving local economies. All these vital outcomes go hand in hand.”
WHO team: More studies needed of virus origin
Members of an international team that wrote a study into the origins of COVID-19 with Chinese colleagues say it is only a "first start" and more needs to be done.
They appealed for patience as reams of information continues to pour in. The team emphasized that hypotheses, including a possible laboratory leak theory, cannot be fully ruled out.
Team leader Peter Ben Embarek of the World Health Organization says its members remain "open-minded" as it formally presented its long-awaited first-phase look into the possible outbreak the coronavirus. The virus has left nearly 2.8 million people dead and damaged economies and livelihoods since it first emerged in China.
Ben Embarek says international team members faced political pressure from "all sides," but insisted "We were never pressured to remove critical elements in our report." He also pointed to "privacy" issues in China that prevented sharing of some data, saying such restrictions would exist in many countries.
Joined by several other members of the 17-member international team for a news conference, Ben Embarek says, "where we did not have full access to all the raw data we wanted, that has been put as a recommendation for the future studies."
Ben Embarek says it was difficult to know when -- if at all -- the exact origin of the pandemic will come to light. He says one hypothesis, pushed hard by the Trump administration, that the virus may have leaked from a laboratory wasn't likely, but "not impossible" either.
WHO report says animals likely source of COVID
A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.
The findings offer little new insight into how the virus first emerged and leave many questions unanswered, though that was as expected. But the report does provide more detail on the reasoning behind the researchers’ conclusions. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis.
The report, which is expected to be made public Tuesday, is being closely watched since discovering the origins of the virus could help scientists prevent future pandemics — but it’s also extremely sensitive since China bristles at any suggestion that it is to blame for the current one. Repeated delays in the report’s release have raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions.
“We’ve got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview.
China rejected that criticism Monday.
“The U.S. has been speaking out on the report. By doing this, isn’t the U.S. trying to exert political pressure on the members of the WHO expert group?” asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
The report is based largely on a visit by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, from mid-January to mid-February.
Also read: COVID-19 not necessarily crossed from animals into humans in Wuhan: WHO expert
In the draft obtained by the AP, the researchers listed four scenarios in order of likelihood for the emergence of the coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. Topping the list was transmission from bats through another animal, which they said was likely to very likely. They evaluated direct spread from bats to humans as likely, and said that spread through “cold-chain” food products was possible but not likely.
Bats are known to carry coronaviruses and, in fact, the closest relative of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in bats. However, the report says that “the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link.”
It said highly similar viruses have been found in pangolins, which are another kind of mammal, but also noted that mink and cats are susceptible to the COVID-19 virus, suggesting they could be carriers, too.
The AP received the draft copy on Monday from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country. It wasn’t clear whether the report might still be changed prior to release, though the diplomat said it was the final version. A second diplomat confirmed getting the report too. Both refused to be identified because they were not authorized to release it ahead of publication.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that he had received the report over the weekend and said it would be formally presented Tuesday.
“We will read the report and discuss, digest its content and next steps with member states,” Tedros told a news conference in Geneva. “But as I have said, all hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies from what I have seen so far.”
Also read: WHO expert skeptical coronavirus leaked from controversial Wuhan lab
He declined to comment on whether political pressure had influenced the report.
The draft report is inconclusive on whether the outbreak started at a Wuhan seafood market that had one of the earliest clusters of cases in December 2019.
The discovery of other cases before the Huanan market outbreak suggests it may have started elsewhere. But the report notes there could have been milder cases that went undetected and that could be a link between the market and earlier cases.
“No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn,” the report said.
The market was an early suspect because some stalls sold a range of animals — and some wondered if they had brought the new virus to Wuhan. The report noted that a range of animal products — including everything from bamboo rats to deer, often frozen — were sold at the market, as were live crocodiles.
As the pandemic spread globally, China found samples of the virus on the packaging of frozen food coming into the country and, in some cases, have tracked localized outbreaks to them.
The report said that the cold chain, as it is known, can be a driver of long-distance virus spread but was skeptical it could have triggered the outbreak. The report says the risk is lower than through human-to-human respiratory infection, and most experts agree.
Also read: What the WHO coronavirus experts learned in Wuhan
“While there is some evidence for possible reintroduction of SARS-CoV-2 through handling of imported contaminated frozen products in China since the initial pandemic wave, this would be extraordinary in 2019 where the virus was not widely circulating,” the study said.
The report cited several reasons for all but dismissing the possibility the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, a speculative theory that was suggested and promoted by former U.S. President Donald Trump among others.
It said such laboratory accidents are rare and the labs in Wuhan working on coronaviruses and vaccines are well-managed. It also noted that there is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019 and that the risk of accidentally growing the virus was extremely low.
WHO report says animals likely source of COVID
A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.
The findings were largely as expected and left many questions unanswered. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis.
Also read: COVID-19 not necessarily crossed from animals into humans in Wuhan: WHO expert
The report’s release has been repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China. A World Health Organization official said late last week that he expected it would be ready for release “in the next few days.”
The AP received what appeared to be a near-final version on Monday from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country. It wasn’t clear whether the report might still be changed prior to its release. The diplomat did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to release it ahead of publication.
The researchers listed four scenarios in order of likelihood. They concluded that transmission through a second animal was likely to very likely. They evaluated direct spread from bats to humans as likely, and said that spread through “cold-chain” food products was possible but not likely.
Also read: WHO expert skeptical coronavirus leaked from controversial Wuhan lab
The closest relative of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in bats, which are known to carry coronaviruses. However, the report says that “the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link.”
It said that highly similar viruses have been found in pangolins, but also noted that mink and cats are susceptible to the COVID virus, which suggests they could be carriers.
The report is based largely on a visit by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, from mid-January to mid-February.
Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO expert who led the Wuhan mission, said Friday that the report had been finalized and was being fact-checked and translated.
Also read: What the WHO coronavirus experts learned in Wuhan
“I expect that in the next few days, that whole process will be completed and we will be able to release it publicly,” he said.
36 countries yet to get Covid jabs: WHO
The UN-backed vaccine initiative COVAX has distributed more than 32 million doses of different vaccines to 61 countries in just one month, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
At the beginning of the year, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had called for countries to work together, so that all states could begin vaccinating within the first 100 days of 2021, reports UN News.
“177 countries and economies have started vaccination," he said on Friday at his regular press briefing, adding that with just 15 days left before the 100 days are up, 36 countries are still waiting for vaccines so they can start inoculating health workers and older people.
Waiting for jabs
Of those countries, 16 are scheduled to receive their first doses from COVAX within the next 15 days, leaving 20 nations waiting.
“COVAX is ready to deliver, but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have," said Tedros, pointing to the distorting effect of export bans and vaccine diplomacy, which have caused “gross inequities in supply and demand”.
Moreover, increased demand for shots, and changes of national strategy, have led to delays in securing tens of millions of doses that COVAX was counting on.
‘Solvable problem’
Noting that getting all countries up and running by day 100, is “a solvable problem”, the UN top health official asked countries with shots cleared for WHO “Emergency Use”, to donate as many as they can as “an urgent stop-gap measure”, so the 20 additional countries can begin vaccinating their healthcare workers and elderly within the next two weeks.
“COVAX needs 10 million doses immediately," he said. While acknowledging that contributing doses is “a tough political choice”, he asserted that “there are plenty of countries who can afford to donate doses with little disruption to their own vaccination plans”.
More in the making
Currently, many countries who had invested in COVAX in good faith have become frustrated with bilateral deals that have left the vaccine initiative short, said Tedros.
“WHO and our partners are continuing to work round the clock to find ways to increase production and secure doses," he added, saying that four more inoculations were being assessed for WHO Emergency Use Listing -- at least one of which may be approved by the end of April.
Seafarers and aircrew, need essential worker status
In related coverage, five UN agencies on Friday advocated for prioritising Covid-19 vaccinations for seafarers and aircrews who have been severely impacted by pandemic-imposed travel restrictions.
“Seafarers and aircrew need to be protected through vaccination as soon as possible to facilitate their safe movement across borders," said the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Labour Organization (ILO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and WHO, in a joint statement.
As such, they called upon countries that have not done so to “designate seafarers and aircrew as key workers”.
“We also call on governments to identify and prepare for the challenges of Covid-19 vaccination of seafarers and aircrew, particularly for seafarers spending long periods of time away from their home country," they added.
African expert warns of 'vaccine war' over access to jabs
The head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned against a “vaccine war” among nations amid renewed fears vaccine shipments to the continent face delays.
John Nkengasong said in a briefing Thursday that he “truly feels helpless that this situation is going to significantly impact our ability to fight this virus," referring to reports that the Serum Institute of India is suspending major exports of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in order to meet rising demand at home.
“Without ramping (up) access to vaccines we will be challenged, continue to be challenged. Lives will be lost,” Dr. Nkengasong said, noting that he remains hopeful "the power of humanity will prevail.”
Also read: Virus variants, vaccine inequity responsible for rising Covid caseload: WHO
He added: “There is absolutely no need, absolutely no need for us as humanity to go into a vaccine war to fight this pandemic. We will all be losers.”
The Serum Institute of India produces the AstraZeneca shots being shipped to Africa through the international COVAX initiative to ensure vaccine access for low- and middle-income countries. At least 28 of Africa's 54 countries have received over 16 million doses via COVAX as of Thursday.
Vaccine shipments through COVAX continue to arrive across Africa. South Sudan, for example, on Thursday received its first batch of 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in what WHO called “a giant step” toward equitable destruction of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.
But COVAX has been facing delays related to the limited global supply of vaccine doses as well as logistical issues. That’s why some countries such as South Africa, the hardest-hit African nation, are also pursuing COVID-19 vaccines via bilateral deals and through the African Union’s bulk-purchasing program.
Also read: Leaders of "Quad" agree to aid vaccine delivery to developing nation
At least 10 African countries are yet to receive vaccines, according to the World Health Organization's regional office for Africa. Those countries include Tanzania, Burundi, Eritrea, Cameroon, and Chad.
The continent has "has received limited doses and much later than the rest of the world,” Dr. Richard Mihigo, a program coordinator in charge of immunization and vaccine development with WHO's Africa office, said in a briefing Thursday.
“We are concerned that while COVAX vaccinations have enabled many African countries to roll out vaccinations, the slow pace of vaccine supply we are now seeing risks widening the gap between the world's vaccinated and the unvaccinated populations,” he said, charging that it's unfair that some wealthy nations “are looking to vaccinate their entire populations” while Africa continues to lag behind.
There are ongoing discussions between WHO, the global vaccine alliance GAVI and Indian authorities aimed at ensuring COVAX shipments continue to be prioritized, the official said.
Africa hopes to vaccinate 60% of its 1.3 billion people by mid-2022 in order to achieve herd immunity, when enough people are protected through infection or vaccination to make it difficult for a virus to continue to spread. That amounts to about 1.5 billion vaccine doses.
That target almost certainly will not be met without widespread use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which many experts see as key to the global strategy to stamp out the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccine from the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker is cheaper and easier to store than many others. It will make up nearly all of the doses shipped in the first half of the year via COVAX.
Experts have warned that until vaccination rates are high the world over, the virus remains a threat everywhere.
“We are all in this together. This is a global pandemic, and we need to solve it through global vaccination, global public health methods," said Anthony Costello, a professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London.
Also read: AstraZeneca confirms strong vaccine protection after US rift
Costello told the WHO briefing that while Africa, with its much younger population, is seeing lower death rates than other regions, "we must put pressure on wealthy countries to ensure that they offer the finance and the assistance to Africa to get the required number of vaccines.”
Africa has confirmed more than 4 million cases of COVID-19, including 110,000 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.
Share Covid jabs out of self-interest: WHO
The growing gap between the number of vaccines being given in rich countries and those administered through COVAX is becoming “more grotesque every day”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
“In January, I said that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure unless urgent steps were taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines," the UN News quoted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General, as telling journalists at a regular news briefing on Monday.
“We have the means to avert this failure, but it’s shocking how little has been done to avert it," he added, noting that WHO has been working “day and night to find solutions to increase the production and equitable distribution of vaccines”.
Also read: Virus variants, vaccine inequity responsible for rising Covid caseload: WHO
‘False sense of security’
The WHO chief pointed out that while some countries are vaccinating their entire populations, others have no shots.
“The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, it’s also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating," he said, pointing out that some nations are vaccinating low risk, younger people at the cost of “health workers, older people and other at-risk groups in other countries”.
And because more transmissions mean more variants, Tedros upheld that the imbalance in jabs only provides “a false sense of security” as “the more variants that emerge, the more likely it is that they will evade vaccines”.
Also read: COVID infections drop 16% worldwide in one week: WHO
“As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed," he spelled out.
Last Friday, WHO hosted a meeting on enhancing genomic sequencing of the coronavirus, to better monitor its evolution in the face of the many mutations that are raising international concern.
Tedros said that while knowing when, how and where the virus is evolving, is vital information, it is of limited use if countries do not work together to suppress transmission “everywhere at the same time”.
“If countries won’t share vaccines for the right reasons, we appeal to them to do it out of self-interest," he said.
AstraZeneca equity commitment
Tedros also told journalists that he had spoken to vaccine manufacturers on how to ramp up production, including the CEO of AstraZeneca, manufacturer of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca shots, which were temporarily suspended by a group of countries, mainly in Europe, amid concerns over blood-clotting statistics.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain, are among those who have begun using the vaccine again following reassurances from top regulators. On Monday, a large study in the United States, Chile and Peru, reportedly showed that the vaccine was 79% effective in preventing the illness and 100% effective against severe symptoms and hospitalisation.
“These data are further evidence that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective," Tedros said.
He flagged that AstraZeneca is “the only company that has committed to not profiting from its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic” and the only vaccine developer that has made a significant contribution to vaccine equity, “by licensing its technology to several other companies”. This includes in Korea and India, where manufacturers are producing more than 90 percent of COVAX-distributed vaccines.
Sharing vaccine technology
“We need more vaccine producers to follow this example and licence their technology to other companies," underscored the WHO chief.
He noted that a year ago, Costa Rica and WHO had launched a mechanism called the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool or C-TAP, designed precisely to promote an “open-science model”, where licensing would occur “in a non-exclusive, transparent manner, to leverage as much manufacturing capacity as possible. So far, C-TAP remains a highly promising, but under-utilized tool".
Again, he argued that while WHO and partners can design and advocate for solutions to save lives, “we need all countries and all manufacturers to work with us to make them happen".
WHO: Global coronavirus deaths rise for 1st time in 6 weeks
A top World Health Organization expert on the coronavirus pandemic said Monday the weekly global count of deaths from COVID-19 is rising again, a “worrying sign” after about six weeks of declines.
Virus variants, vaccine inequity responsible for rising Covid caseload: WHO
Noting that Covid-19 cases globally are on track to rise for a fourth week in a row, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that both virus variants and vaccine inequity are responsible for the spike.
EU agency: AstraZeneca vaccine safe, will add clot warning
The European Union's drug regulatory agency said Thursday that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not linked to an overall increase in the risk of blood clots and that the benefits of use outweigh the risks, paving the way for European countries to resume administering the shots.