This archive collects coverage of the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency that coordinates global public health efforts. Stories here focus on positive milestones, policy advances, and initiatives that reflect progress in disease prevention, health equity, and international cooperation.
North Korea introduced a mass measles-rubella immunization program in November 2019. Through this mass immunization activity, achieving more than 99.8% coverage in almost 6 million target population, the country has rapidly built substantial population immunity for rubella.
For centuries, this disease has afflicted millions of people worldwide, causing pain, severe disability and social stigmatization. It is now the second neglected tropical disease (NTD) that the Southeast Asian country has eliminated following the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in 2017.
The R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed at Oxford University, is expected to offer countries a cheaper and more readily available option than the world’s first shot against the parasitic disease.
Over the last 3 decades, Belize has achieved a dramatic reduction in its malaria burden – from a peak of about 10 000 cases in 1994 to zero indigenous cases in 2019.
The WHO formally ended its COVID-19 global health emergency on May 5, 2023, more than three years after the designation first triggered a worldwide response. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed to over a year of declining transmission and deaths as the reason most countries can finally return to pre-pandemic rhythms. He didn’t gloss over the loss — nearly 7 million deaths were officially reported, with the true toll likely closer to 20 million — but he credited vaccines, scientific cooperation, and health infrastructure built during the crisis for bending the curve. The closing of this chapter offers a rare pause to honor what collective action can achieve, and a reminder to protect the systems we’ll need before the next crisis arrives.
Over the past decade, rubella cases have decreased dramatically in the Western Pacific Region, as millions of babies and young children have been reached with vaccines.
The country was previously classified as a “high burden” country, which is defined as more than two percent of women living with HIV.
Forty countries now have best-practice trans fat elimination policies in effect, protecting 1.4 billion people from this deadly food compound, according to new WHO report.
The world’s first malaria vaccine just cleared its biggest hurdle: after pilot programs delivered more than 2.3 million doses across Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi, the World Health Organization has recommended RTS,S for broad use in sub-Saharan Africa. The shot targets the deadliest malaria parasite and prevented roughly four in ten cases in trials — modest-sounding, but a genuine triumph after a century of scientific effort. WHO leaders say it could save tens of thousands of young lives each year, working alongside bed nets, drugs, and mosquito control rather than replacing them. For a disease that has shaped childhood across the continent for generations, this is a real turning point — and a reminder that the slow, stubborn work of global health science can still change the world.
China has become the 40th country to be declared malaria-free. It has not had an indigenous case for four years.
