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.
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.
Cannabis is no longer classified as a Schedule IV drug as per WHO’s recommendation. The declassification opens up the door for more research into its medicinal and therapeutic uses.
Over the last 20 years, however, the number of people infected has dropped by 74%, from 199 million to 51.4 million, and last year three countries—Malawi, Kiribati, and Yemen—eliminated it altogether.
The strategy involves vaccinating 90% of girls by the age of 15, screening 70% of women by the age of 35 and again by the age of 45, and treating 90% of women identified with cervical disease.
Due to a highly effective global vaccine program, the proportion of children under five who are chronically infected with Hepatitis B has plummeted significantly—to just under 1%. This is down from around 5% in the pre-vaccine era (the period between the 1980s and the early 2000s), according to new estimates from the World Health Organization.
In the World Health Organization’s annual global tuberculosis report, the UN agency responsible for international public health forecasts hundreds of thousands of people recovering from, or avoiding the disease of TB altogether. Since 2000, TB treatment has averted the deaths of 60 million people, the disease itself being treatable with the right medicine.
The World Health Organization has validated that the disease has been eliminated from the country: This is extra impressive, because in 2005, trachoma was responsible for 4% of all cases of blindness there. The nation joins Nepal in the WHO South-East Asia Region and 12 countries globally to achieve this feat.
“The decrease we are seeing in several major cholera-endemic countries demonstrates the increased engagement of countries in global efforts to slow and prevent cholera outbreaks and shows the vital role of mass cholera vaccination campaigns,” said the WHO Director-General.
