An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus disease in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is over, the government announced on Wednesday, after a five-month response supported by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), and other partners.   

During her visit to Ghana on Monday, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed met with young people living with HIV and disabilities in the capital, Accra.   

Some 10,000 health workers will be trained to support mothers and newborns in Africa through a partnership between the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and Laerdal Global Health, the non-profit arm of a Norwegian company that provides innovative training, educational and therapy solutions for emergency medical care and patient safety.

A UN-backed fund, launched on Tuesday, is set to take on the centuries-old crisis centred around sanitation, hygiene and menstrual health, which now impacts more than four billion people across the world. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) set out a strategy on Tuesday for eliminating cervical cancer, which would avoid the death of an estimated five million women and girls from the disease, by 2050.

Despite encouraging news about COVID-19 vaccines and cautious optimism over potential new tools against the disease, “this is not the time for complacency,” the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday during his latest press briefing in Geneva. 

As the number of people with diabetes surges, many are at “increased risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19”, the UN chief said in his message for World Diabetes Day, on Saturday. 

A global chronic under-investment in public health has been exposed by the coronavirus pandemic, which must now lead to a major re-think in how all societies value health, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday.

Although South Sudan had recently been declared free from the wild poliovirus, the UN health agency said on Friday that 15 children under the age of five are reported to have been infected by a vaccine-derived form of polio, which has left them with irreversible paralysis. 

A bold new blueprint to tackle all neglected tropical diseases has been agreed at the UN health agency’s World Health Assembly, which will involve a radical shift in approach by Member States and non-state actors, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.