WHO

WHO travel to support program work

21 May 2017 | GENEVA – Travel is an essential aspect of WHO’s global health work – convening experts for collective decision-making on health interventions or traveling experts anywhere in the world that requires technical assistance for global health. WHO’s travel expenditure in calendar year 2015 was US$ 234 million, and in calendar year 2016 was US$ 200 million – a reduction of 14%.

Less than half of these costs are for staff travel – nearly 60% is spent on travel of external experts to support countries, and for representatives of Member States to travel to technical meetings and sessions of WHO governing bodies.

WHO staff travel covers a diverse range of activities: for example, assessing countries’ emergency preparedness, implementing vaccine campaigns, training Member States’ health care workforce, and strengthening Organizational management.

WHO has clear travel policies, recently strengthened by Director-General Margaret Chan’s request for a policy prohibiting first class travel for all of WHO, regardless of position or grade. Business class travel is permitted only for official travel over 9 hours. In addition, per diems for all WHO-funded travel conform to UN rates.

The Director-General strictly abides by WHO’s travel policies. She does not travel first class. She receives a standard per diem entitlement at UN rates. For example, on recent travel to Guinea, the Director-General’s overnight stay cost the same as all other WHO travellers – €212 – and well within UN per diem rates. On some visits, the Director-General is hosted by a Member State. In those cases; her accommodation is provided by the hosting nation at no cost to WHO. When that occurs, she receives no per diem.

WHO is always looking for ways to reduce travel costs. Overall compliance with WHO’s travel policy is high, and improving each year. As an example, to-date in 2017, only 20% of business class tickets were purchased less than 14 days before travel (emergency travel often requires booking within the 14 day rule, and can be permitted with appropriate review). This is a marked improvement on the 31% during the same period in 2016 and 39% in 2015.

WHO

22 May 2017 | GENEVA – In her final opening address to the World Health Assembly as Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan offered some advice to delegates “as you continue to shape the future of this Organization”.

She called on the Health Assembly to make “reducing inequalities” a guiding ethical principle. “WHO stands for fairness,” she said. Countries should also work to improve collection of health data and make health strategies more accountable.

Protecting scientific evidence should form “the bedrock of policy”, said Dr Chan, citing vaccine refusal as one of the reasons that the “tremendous potential of vaccines is not yet fully realized”.

She stressed the importance of continued innovation, citing the research partnership between WHO and others to produce an effective and highly affordable meningitis A vaccine that has transformed the lives of millions of people in Africa. “Meeting the ambitious targets in the Sustainable Development Goals depends on innovation,” she said.

She then asked governments and partners to safeguard WHO’s integrity in all stakeholder engagements. “The Framework for engagement with non-state actors is a prime instrument for doing so,” and to “listen to civil society”: “Civil society organizations are best placed to hold governments and businesses, like the tobacco, food and alcohol industries, accountable. They are the ones who can give the people who suffer the most a face and a voice.”

In closing, Dr Chan asked government representatives to: “Remember the people…Behind every number is a person who defines our common humanity and deserves our compassion, especially when suffering or premature death can be prevented.”

New President of the Health Assembly

Earlier in the day, the Health Assembly elected Professor Veronica Skvortsova, Minister of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, as its new President. Five Vice-Presidents were also appointed from Cabo Verde, the Cook Islands, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Somalia and Suriname.

Some 3500 delegates from WHO’s 194 Member States – including a large proportion of the world’s health ministers – are attending the Health Assembly, which ends on 31 May. They are currently debating ways to advance the 2030 agenda, focusing on building better systems for health.

Election of New Director-General

Tomorrow, Member States will elect a new Director-General, who will take office for a five-year term on 1 July 2017.

The three nominees for the position, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia; Dr David Nabarro of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Dr Sania Nishtar of Pakistan, will each address the Health Assembly for 15 minutes tomorrow afternoon, starting at 14.00 (CET). Dr Tedros will speak first, followed by Dr Nabarro and then by Dr Nishtar. The three addresses will be webcast.

The election will take place by secret ballot and its result will be communicated once the process has been completed. The Director-General Elect will take the oath of office in a public ceremony, which will be webcast.

Topics covered during the Health Assembly

Over the next days, delegates will approve the Organization’s programme budget for 2018-19 and discuss a wide range of health-related issues. They will make decisions relating to WHO’s response to health emergencies, the International Health Regulations, and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness. Important discussions will take place relating to polio; antimicrobial resistance; access to medicines and vaccines; the health of refugees and migrants; improving vector control; adolescent health and chemicals management. The Health Assembly will also examine a number of topics relating to noncommunicable diseases, including dementia, cancer, and preparations for the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on NCDs to be held in September 2018.

A series of daily, webcast, technical briefings will start on Wednesday 24 May with a session on Reaching everyone, everywhere with life-saving vaccines. Subsequent briefings will focus on Universal Health Coverage: sustained commitment and concrete achievements (Thursday, 25 May) and Health and the environment, inheriting a sustainable world (Friday, 26 May).

Note to Editors

The World Health Assembly is attended by delegates from WHO Member States as well as representatives from many agencies, organizations, foundations and other groups that contribute to improving public health. Member States approve resolutions in committee before formally adopting them in the plenary session at the end of the Health Assembly.

For more information, please contact:

Gregory Härtl
WHO Department of Communications
Mobile: +41 79 203 67 15
Email: hartlg@who.int

Ms Fadéla Chaib
WHO Department of Communications
Mobile: +41 79 475 5556
Email: chaibf@who.int

Mr Tarik Jasarevic
WHO Department of Communications
Mobile: +41 79 367 6214
Email:jasarevict@who.int

Mr Christian Lindmeier
WHO Department of Communications
Mobile: +41 79 500 6552
Email: lindmeierch@who.int

WHO

Address to the Seventieth World Health Assembly

Dr. Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization

Madame President, Excellencies, honourable ministers, ambassadors, distinguished delegates, friends and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

I thank Member States for the trust shown when you appointed me as your Director-General more than ten years ago. I promised to work tirelessly, and have done so, but never got tired of the job, in the best and worst of times.

When I took office, I also promised that I would hold myself accountable for the Organization’s performance. This month, I have issued a report tracking how public health evolved during the ten years of my administration.

The report sets out the facts and assesses the trends, but makes no effort to promote my administration. The report goes some way towards dispelling the frequent criticism that WHO has lost its relevance. The facts tell a different story.

The report covers setbacks as well as successes and some landmark events. Above all, it is a tribute to the power of partnerships and the capacity of public health to take solutions found for one problem and apply them to others.

As just one example, it took nearly a decade to get the prices for antiretroviral treatments for HIV down. In contrast, thanks to teamwork and collaboration, prices for the new drugs that cure hepatitis C plummeted within two years.

This is the culture of evidence-based learning that improves efficiency, gives health efforts their remarkable resilience, and keeps us irrepressibly optimistic.

We falter sometimes, but we never give up.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen,

As I speak to you, the political and economic outlook is much less optimistic than it was when I took office in 2007.

That was before the 2008 financial crisis changed the economic outlook from prosperity to austerity almost overnight, with effects on economies and health budgets that are still being felt.

That was before acts of international terrorism and violent extremism became commonplace, before the word “mega-disaster” entered the humanitarian vocabulary, before seemingly endless armed conflicts caused the largest population displacements and flights of refugees seen since the end of World War II.

That was before the alarming frequency of attacks on health facilities and aid convoys made a mockery of international humanitarian law. We condemn all these attacks on health care facilities and workers. According to reports consolidated by WHO, more than 300 attacks on health care facilities occurred in 2016 in 20 countries, with the majority documented in the Syrian Arab Republic. We are also seeing how a world full of threats can toss out deadly combinations, like the dual threats from drought and armed conflict that have brought famine to parts of Africa and the Middle East on a scale never experienced since the United Nations was founded in 1945.

The world was fortunate that the 2009 influenza pandemic was so mild. The world is fortunate that the new viruses that emerged to cause MERS in 2012 and human cases of H7N9 avian influenza in 2013 are not yet spreading easily from person to person. But they have the potential to do so and we dare not let down our guard.

The world was less fortunate with Zika, an outbreak that WHO continues to monitor closely. The world was not at all fortunate with the 2014 Ebola outbreak that utterly devastated the populations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. This was West Africa’s first experience with Ebola, and the outbreak took everyone, including WHO, by surprise.

WHO was too slow to recognize that the virus, during its first appearance in West Africa, would behave very differently than during past outbreaks in central Africa, where the virus was rare but familiar and containment measures were well-rehearsed.

But WHO made quick course corrections, brought the three outbreaks under control, and gave the world its first Ebola vaccine that confers substantial protection. This happened on my watch, and I am personally accountable.

I saw it as my duty, as your Director-General, to do everything possible to ensure that a tragedy on this scale will not happen again. History will judge whether the new emergencies programme has given the world a stronger level of protection.

Ultimately, health systems with International Health Regulations core capacities must be strengthened in your countries to detect unexplained deaths much earlier. This is critical for improving global health security to protect our common vulnerability.

Last week, the Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed a new Ebola outbreak near the border with the Central African Republic. This is the country’s eighth Ebola outbreak. In its last outbreak, which coincided with the West Africa outbreak, DRC interrupted transmission within six weeks. Despite enormous logistical challenges, discussions engaging DRC continue about possible use of the new vaccine to augment the response.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa had a number of spillover effects which can be judged more immediately. During the outbreak, WHO acquired extensive experience in facilitating R&D for new medical products, but poor coordination lost too much time. To speed things up, WHO and its partners finalized an R&D blueprint in 2016.

By setting up collaborative models, standardized protocols for clinical trials, and pathways for accelerated regulatory approval in advance, the blueprint cut the time needed to develop and manufacture candidate products from years to months.

The expert consultations that designed the blueprint led to the establishment of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, announced in January 2017 with initial funding of nearly $500 million.

The Coalition is building a new system to develop affordable vaccines for priority pathogens, identified by WHO, as a head-start for responding to the next inevitable outbreak.

The world is better prepared but not nearly well enough.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen,

The relevance of WHO’s work is demonstrated in many ways, some more visible than others.

The chronology of the HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria epidemics shows direct links between WHO changes in technical strategies and turning points in the disease situation.

WHO also made scientific breakthroughs more democratic by translating findings into a public health approach that works everywhere, even in extremely resource-constrained settings.

Relevance is readily apparent when WHO endorses a new medical product, and partners find ways to fund it, or issues a position paper on a new vaccine. Many national immunization programmes will not introduce a new vaccine until WHO has issued its formal seal of approval. Such approval triggers actions by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to scale up access dramatically.

The prequalification programme is now firmly established as a mechanism for ensuring that the quality, safety, and efficacy of low-cost generic products match those of originator products. For example, by the end of 2016, WHO had prequalified more than 250 finished pharmaceutical products for treating HIV-related conditions. This stretches the impact of funding agencies, like the Global Fund, in significant ways.

The relevance of WHO was most dramatically demonstrated during last month’s global partners meeting on the neglected tropical diseases.

Participants assessed, and celebrated, ten years of record-breaking progress that promises to eliminate many of these ancient diseases in the very near future. This is one of the most effective global partnerships, also with industry, in the modern history of public health.

The fact that, in 2015, nearly one billion people received free treatments that protect them from diseases that blind, maim, deform, and debilitate has little impact on the world’s geopolitical situation.

The people being protected are among the poorest in the world. But judging from the massive amount of media coverage, which included entry into the Guinness World Records for the most medication donated, this was a success story that the world was hungry to hear.

Less visible relevance comes from the way WHO has built a safety net that encircles the globe in the form of thousands of laboratories specialized in the surveillance and diagnosis of priority pathogens, hundreds of collaborating centres, and a vast network of scientific boards and strategic advisory groups. I thank the scientific institutions in your countries for contributing to the work of WHO.

No other health agency has this degree of technical expertise ready-to-hand.

Excellencies,

The resolutions you adopt also shape the health situation, especially by raising the profile of neglected problems. For example, the comprehensive mental health action plan, adopted in 2013, definitively took mental health out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Likewise, beginning in 2010, viral hepatitis appeared as a stand-alone agenda item at three sessions of the World Health Assembly, contributing greatly to the international priority now given to this disease.

But the strongest call for action comes from high-level political commitment. This happened in 2011, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a political declaration on noncommunicable diseases and again in 2016, when a political declaration gave full attention to antimicrobial resistance.

Both political declarations responded to a crisis in ways that triggered broad-based urgent action to find solutions.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen,

I regard the 2010 World Health Report, on Health systems financing: the path to universal coverage, as the most influential publication issued during my administration.

It launched what is now a movement towards universal health coverage and inspired the 2012 UN General Assembly resolution that paved the way for inclusion of UHC in the Sustainable Development Goals. Our actions under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development must be guided by the 5 Ps: people, planet, peace, prosperity, and partnership.

The recommendations that I most want to see implemented are those made by the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity.

Childhood obesity is the most visible, and arguably the most tragic, expression of the forces that are driving the rise of NCDs. It is the warning signal that bad trouble, in the form of more heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, is on its way.

The initiatives we all most want to succeed are those for the eradication of polio and guinea worm disease. For both, the world has never been so close. We must keep up our efforts to make eradication a reality.

The trend that most profoundly reshaped the mind-set of public health was the rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases. This shift in the disease burden called for a move away from the biomedical model of health and its emphasis on curing diseases to a much broader approach based on prevention.

I regard Every Woman Every Child as the most game-changing strategy during my administration.

Its adoption by the UN in 2010 captured financial support in the billions of dollars and launched a number of initiatives aimed at implementing its recommendations. Maternal and child deaths dropped dramatically.

The related WHO Commission on information and accountability for women’s and children’s health added greatly to the culture of measurement and accountability. As set out in this year’s World Health Statistics report, nearly half of all deaths worldwide now have a recorded cause of death. This is huge progress. I thank all countries that have made a special effort on this front.

The most contentious issue was access to medicines, especially when intellectual property and the patent system were perceived as barriers to both affordable prices and the development of new products for diseases of the poor.

The negotiations that led to the establishment of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework were tense, to say the least, but ultimately successful, as were those that led to the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.

Fortunately, several new initiative and public-private partnerships are contributing to both objectives. One example is the new Global antibiotic research and development partnership, launched last year by WHO and the Drugs for neglected diseases initiative (DNDi).

This is a needs-driven R&D initiative initially focused on the development of new antibiotics for treating sepsis and sexually transmitted infections, most notably gonorrhoea. The partnership aims to promote access and to ensure that prices are affordable.

Earlier this month, WHO announced the launch of a pilot project for prequalifying biosimilar medicines, a step towards making expensive cancer treatments more widely available.

WHO is also working with partners on a model for the fair pricing of pharmaceuticals. The rationale is obvious: universal health coverage depends on affordable medicines. No country on this planet can hope to treat its way out of all the diseases affecting their populations.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen,

I will conclude with some brief advice that you may wish to consider as you continue to shape the future of this Organization.

WHO stands for fairness. Continue to make reductions in inequalities a guiding ethical principle.

What gets measured gets done. Continue to strengthen systems for civil registration and vital statistics and continue to make accountability frameworks an integral part of global health strategies.

Scientific evidence is the bedrock of policy. Protect it. No one knows whether evidence will retain its persuasive power in what many now describe as a post-truth world.

Vaccine refusals are at least one reason why the tremendous potential of vaccines is not yet fully realized. The current measles outbreaks in Europe and North America should never have happened.

Push for innovation. Meeting the ambitious health targets in the Sustainable Development Goals depends on innovation. Innovation that uses country experiences can be frugal and transformative. For example, the R&D partnership that gave Africa its meningitis A vaccine has transformed the lives of millions of people.

Safeguard WHO’s integrity in all stakeholder engagements. The Framework for engagement with non-state actors is a prime instrument for doing so. Many other UN agencies are following WHO’s lead with this framework.

While ministries of health are our principle partners, the multiple determinants of health demand engagement with non-health sectors, communities, and partners, businesses, and civil society organizations.

Listen to civil society. Civil society organizations are society’s conscience. They are best placed to hold governments and businesses, like the tobacco, food, and alcohol industries, accountable. They are the ones who can give the people who suffer the most a face and a voice.

Above all, remember the people. Behind every number is a person who defines our common humanity and deserves our compassion, especially when suffering or premature death can be prevented.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen,

This is the last time I will address the World Health Assembly. I thank Member States for the privilege and honour of serving this Organization. I have done so with humility, but also with great pride.

I thank my Regional Directors for their wise counsel and their support for WHO reform, and my wonderful staff at headquarters, in the regional offices, and in countries, where the impact of our work matters most.

Last but not least, I thank my husband, David, and my family for love and support. David, thank you for listening.

Thank you.

 

The Guardian

• The cases appeared tied to one funeral suggesting that an isolated poisoning was to blame
• WHO and medical charity Doctors Without Borders have said the warning system put in place in Liberia after the Ebola crisis prompted fast action following the recent deaths.
• The unexplained illness causes fever, vomiting, headaches and diarrhoea.

 

VOA

WHO

Unprecedented progress against neglected tropical diseases, WHO reports

19 April 2017 | Geneva – WHO reports remarkable achievements in tackling neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) since 2007. An estimated 1 billion people received treatment in 2015 alone.

“WHO has observed record-breaking progress towards bringing ancient scourges like sleeping sickness and elephantiasis to their knees,” said WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan. “Over the past 10 years, millions of people have been rescued from disability and poverty, thanks to one of the most effective global partnerships in modern public health”.

The WHO report, Integrating neglected tropical diseases in global health and development, demonstrates how strong political support, generous donations of medicines, and improvements in living conditions have led to sustained expansion of disease control programs in countries where these diseases are most prevalent.

Since 2007, when a group of global partners met to agree to tackle NTDs together, a variety of local and international partners have worked alongside ministries of health in endemic countries to deliver quality-assured medicines, and provide people with care and long-term management.

In 2012, partners endorsed a WHO NTD roadmap, committing additional support and resources to eliminating 10 of the most common NTDs.

Key achievements include:

• 1 billion people treated for at least one neglected tropical disease in 2015 alone.
• 556 million people received preventive treatment for lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis).
• More than 114 million people received treatment for onchocerciasis (river blindness: 62% of those requiring it.
• Only 25 human cases of Guinea-worm disease were reported in 2016, putting eradication within reach.
• Cases of human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) have been reduced from 37 000 new cases in 1999 to well under 3000 cases in 2015.
• Trachoma – the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness – has been eliminated as a public health problem in Mexico, Morocco, and Oman. More than 185 000 trachoma patients had surgery for trichiasis worldwide and more than 56 million people received antibiotics in 2015 alone.
• Visceral leishmaniasis: in 2015 the target for elimination was achieved in 82% of sub-districts in India, 97% of sub-districts in Bangladesh, and in 100% of districts in Nepal.
• Only 12 reported human deaths were attributable to rabies in the WHO Region of the Americas in 2015, bringing the region close to its target of eliminating rabies in humans by 2015.

However, the report highlights the need to further scale up action in other areas.

“Further gains in the fight against neglected tropical diseases will depend on wider progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Dr Dirk Engels, Director of the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Meeting global targets for water and sanitation will be key. WHO estimates that 2.4 billion people still lack basic sanitation facilities such as toilets and latrines, while more than 660 million continue to drink water from “unimproved” sources, such as surface water.

Meanwhile, global concern about the recent outbreaks of Zika virus disease, and its associated complications, has re-energized efforts to improve vector control. In May this year, the World Health Assembly will review proposals for a new Global vector control response. There are also brighter prospects to prioritize cross-sectoral collaboration to promote veterinary public health.

Global Partners’ Meeting

Integrating neglected tropical diseases in global health and development is being released at the Global Partners’ Meeting on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in Geneva, on 19 April 2017.

The Meeting will celebrate efforts to “Collaborate. Accelerate. Eliminate”, and will be attended by health ministers, industry representatives, partners and a host of well-known personalities, including philanthropists, donors and stakeholders.

Besides celebrating 10 years of multi-stakeholder collaboration, the event will also mark the 5th anniversary of the WHO NTD Roadmap which established targets and milestones for the global control, elimination, and eradication of many of these diseases as well as that of the London Declaration.

• London declaration on neglected tropical diseases

Note to editors:

Neglected tropical diseases blind, maim, disfigure and debilitate hundreds of millions of people in urban slums and in the poorest parts of the world.

Once widely prevalent, these diseases are now restricted to tropical and sub-tropical regions with unsafe water, inadequate hygiene and sanitation, and poor housing conditions. Poor people living in remote, rural areas, urban slums, or conflict zones are most at risk.

More than 70% of countries and territories that report the presence of NTDs are low or lower-middle income economies.

 

WHO

Don’t pollute my future! The impact of the environment on children’s health

Background

In 2015, 5.9 million children under age five died. The major causes of child deaths globally are pneumonia, prematurity, intrapartum-related complications, neonatal sepsis, congenital anomalies, diarrhoea, injuries and malaria. Most of these diseases and conditions are at least partially caused by the environment. It was estimated in 2012 that 26% of childhood deaths and 25% of the total disease burden in children under five could be prevented through the reduction of environmental risks such as air pollution, unsafe water, sanitation and inadequate hygiene or chemicals.

Children are especially vulnerable to environmental threats due to their developing organs and immune systems, smaller bodies and airways. Harmful exposures can start as early as in utero. Furthermore, breastfeeding can be an important source of exposure to certain chemicals in infants; this should, however, not discourage breastfeeding which carries numerous positive health and developmental effects (4). Proportionate to their size, children ingest more food, drink more water and breathe more air than adults. Additionally, certain modes of behaviour, such as putting hands and objects into the mouth and playing outdoors can increase children’s exposure to environmental contaminants.

 

CIDRAP

“…..The WHO recommends the following for the Northern Hemisphere’s trivalent vaccines:

• For H1N1, an A/Michigan/45/2015-like virus
• For H3N2, an A/Hong Hong/4801/2014-like virus
• For B, Brisbane/60/2008-like virus (belonging to the Victoria lineage)

For quadrivalent versions that contain two influenza B strains, the WHO experts recommended adding Phuket/3073/2013-like virus, a Yamagata lineage virus that is the second B component of quadrivalent vaccines for both the Southern Hemisphere’s past and the Northern Hemisphere’s current season….”

“…..Today the group said that recent H7N9 viruses fall into the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) or Pearl River Delta (PRD) hemagglutinin lineages, and that two existing candidate vaccine viruses don’t seem to protect against recent YRD-lineage viruses. They proposed a new candidate vaccine virus to protect against those viruses.

Also, they said the newly identified highly pathogenic H7N9 viruses isolated from poultry and people are genetically and antigenically distinct from other H7N9 viruses, including recommended candidate strain, including the newly proposed one. Therefore, the group recommended a new candidate vaccine virus to protect against the highly pathogenic H7N9 strain.

The group also recommended three other candidate pandemic vaccine viruses, two against recent variant H1N1 strains and one against the recent H5N6 virus circulating in Japan and South Korea……”

 

WHO

CIDRAP

The World Health Organization was requested by Member States to develop a global priority pathogens list (global PPL) of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to help in prioritizing the research and development (R&D) of new and effective antibiotic treatments.

WHO PRIORITY PATHOGENS LIST  FOR R&D OF NEW ANTIBIOTICS

Priority 1: CRITICAL
Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem-resistant
Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant
Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, 3rd generation cephalosporin-resistant

Priority 2: HIGH
Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant, vancomycin intermediate and resistant
Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin-resistant
Campylobacter, fluoroquinolone-resistant
Salmonella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant
Neisseria gonorrhoeae, 3rd generation cephalosporin-resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant

Priority 3: MEDIUM
Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible
Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant
Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

WHO

WHO Executive Board agrees on an initial short list of candidates to the post of WHO Director-General

Today, WHO has taken the next step in the election of the Director-General of WHO.

Initial screening of the 6 candidates nominated by Member States was conducted by the Executive Board. The Board then voted to determine a short list of 5 candidates.

The short list comprises the following candidates:

• Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
• Dr Flavia Bustreo
• Professor Philippe Douste-Blazy
• Dr David Nabarro
• Dr Sania Nishtar

Tomorrow, on 25 January, Members of the Executive Board will conduct interviews, and shorten the list to 3 nominees, by vote. Their names will be announced by the Executive Board Chair, Dr Ray Busuttil on Wednesday evening 25 January. All Member States will choose among the three nominees by voting at the World Health Assembly in May 2017. The new Director-General will take office on 1 July 2017.

NY Times

“Stung by the lack of vaccines to fight the West African Ebola epidemic, a group of prominent donors announced Wednesday that they had raised almost $500 million for a new partnership to stop epidemics before they spiral out of control.

The partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, will initially develop and stockpile vaccines against three known viral threats, and also push the development of technology to brew large amounts of vaccine quickly when new threats…arise……Bill Gates, founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest initial donors…has often predicted that the catastrophe most likely to kill 10 million people in the near future is a pandemic rather than nuclear war, terrorism, famine or natural disaster.

The other donors….include the governments of Japan and Norway, and Britain’s Wellcome Trust. Each is putting up $100 million to $125 million over five years; Germany, India and the European Commission are expected to announce donations soon.

Six major vaccine makers — GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi and Takeda — joined in the coalition as “partners” rather than donors, as did the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders……”