Commentaries

Op-Ed by Dr. Matshidiso Moeti - The beginning of November in Dakar, Senegal, marks the end of the rainy season and the start of the peak in air pollution levels that the dry season brings. While August and September are the best months for breathing in the city, the pollution levels from December to March are, on average, above recommended safety levels.
Op-Ed by Dr Matshidiso Moeti - Over the past six and a half years, we’ve witnessed an extraordinary international endeavour to stamp out Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a group of dangerous, destructive conditions that threaten the lives and well-being of more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. NTDs earned their name because they were relatively unknown and overlooked for decades. But that is rapidly changing, thanks to the coordinated efforts of governments, health and development…
Op-Ed by Adelheid Onyango and Bibi Giyose - When faced with a crisis, our natural reaction is to deal with its immediate threats. Ateka* came to the make-shift clinic with profuse diarrhoea: they diagnosed cholera. The urgent concern in the midst of that humanitarian crisis was to treat the infection and send her home as quickly as possible.
Statement of the Regional Director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, on the launch of “Nursing Now” The ‘Nursing Now’ campaign, to be launched in Geneva, London and Kampala on 27 February 2018, aims to improve health globally by raising the status and profile of nursing, and enable nurses to maximize their contribution to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC).  ‘Nursing Now’ is hosted by the Burdett Trust for Nursing, an independent charitable trust in the UK, supported by the UK Departments of Health…
More and more people are living longer than before in Africa In Africa, older people are valued for their wisdom and knowledge, and have also been traditionally hard to find. Fifty years ago, the average life expectancy at birth in the continent was under the age of 45. But the life expectancy at birth for most of Africa has now grown to exactly 60 years in 2015, with the number increasing in many countries by 20 percent or more over the past 15 years.
28 August 2014 -- WHO today issues a roadmap to guide and coordinate the international response to the outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in west Africa. The roadmap aims to stop ongoing Ebola transmission worldwide within 6-9 months while rapidly managing the consequences of any further international spread.