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  Declining levels of immunisation allow highly infectious disease to spread as WHO steps up efforts to close gaps in vaccination programmes. Measles cases surged in 2019 because vaccination rates fell. Measles surged worldwide in 2019 to reach the highest number of reported cases in 23 years, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, which blamed falling rates of vaccination for the resurgence of the highly infectious and sometimes deadly disease. Cases increased in all parts of the world to reach 869,770, the highest number since 1996, while deaths rose to an estimated 207,500. Global measles deaths have climbed nearly 50 percent since 2016, the report said. Comparing data from 2019 with the historic low in reported measles cases in 2016, authors said the failure to vaccinate children on time with two doses of measles-containing vaccines (MCV1 and MCV2) was fuelling the disease. “W

WHO foundation will be an independent grant-making entity addressing the most pressing global health challenges. The WHO chief said the creation of the WHO Foundation had nothing to do with 'recent funding issues'  World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Wednesday the creation of a foundation that will enable it to tap new sources of funding, including the general public. The WHO Foundation is being created as an independent grant-making entity that will support the organisation's efforts to address the most pressing global health challenges by raising new funds from "non-traditional sources". Tedrossaid this month the UN body's annual budget of about $2.3bn was "very, very small" for a global agency, close to that of a medium-sized hospital in the developed world. He also said the funding sources were too uncertain, being overly reliant on "flexible f

Study, which does not include COVD-19 patients, suggests key receptor on surface of cells more diffused in men. In most countries, the number of deaths from the new coronavirus among men is higher than women  The level of a key enzyme used by the new coronavirus to infect cells is higher in men's blood than women's, a  new study has found. In most countries, the number of deaths from the new coronavirus among men is higher than women.   The discrepancy was first noted in China where the  death rates  showed that 2.8 percent of men who caught the virus had died, compared with 1.7 percent of women. Italian women died at a  death rate  of 4.1 percent compared with 7.2 percent for men. In South Korea, about 54 percent of the reported deaths were among men. The study,  published on Monday by the European Heart Journal,  suggests that the Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a key receptor on the surface of cells which binds to

Nations must return to testing, tracing and quarantining strategy rather than reopening economies, says WHO official. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief (left), called for a spirit of solidarity to continue fighting the spread of the virus If the world is to bring the  coronavirus outbreak under control, nations must carry out the  "basic principles" of public health surveillance, a top World Health Organization expert said on Friday. The call for a return to greater vigilance comes as more countries turn their efforts  towards reopening economies battered by the pandemic. "We seem ... to be avoiding the uncomfortable reality that we need to get back to public health surveillance," Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO's health emergencies programme, said during a media briefing. "We need to go back to where we should have been months ago - finding cases, tracking cases, testing cases, i

Tanzania receives first shipment of herbal concoction that Madagascar claims cures COVID-19, but WHO has misgivings. Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina launched the purported concoction at a ceremony last month Tanzania says it has received its first shipment of Madagascar's self-proclaimed, plant-based "cure" for coronavirus, despite warnings from the World Health Organization that its efficacy is unproven. The announcement on Friday came days after Madagascar said it would begin selling the herbal concoction - known as covid organics- and that several African countries had already put in orders.  "Tanzania today received the support of coronavirus medicine from Madagascar," government spokesman Hassan Abas said on Twitter. The purported remedy is a drink derived from artemisia - a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment - and other indigenous herbs. Last month, Madagascar's President

Uncertainty over the reinfection or reactivation of the virus in patients could affect vaccine development. South Korea is gradually easing coronavirus restrictions but is facing a number of incidences where people thought to have recovered have been found to have contracted the virus again Seoul, South Korea  - As countries like the United States and Italy continue to diagnose and lose thousands of people to COVID-19 each day, South Korea's new infections appear to be thinning out. But the country is now grappling with a new problem: at least 222 people  have tested positive for the virus again after recovering, and experts are not sure why. "We can look at this as a matter of reinfection or a matter of reactivation," said Dr Roh Kyung-ho, a medic  who works at the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the National Health Insurance Ilsan Hospital. The difference between those two words - reinfection or reactivation - could

UN health agency says there is 'no evidence' that recovered coronavirus patients are protected from reinfection. The WHO warns that there is 'no evidence' that people who had developed antibodies after recovering from the virus were protected against a second infection The United Nations's health agency has warned there is no scientific evidence to prove that people who have recovered from the COVID-19 develop immunity against potential infection in the future. The World Health Organization (WHO) gave the warning on Saturday as a number of countries consider issuing so-called "immunity passports" to people who have recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The WHO said such a move could actually increase the transmission of the novel coronavirus as people who have recovered may ignore advice about taking standard precautions against the virus, which has so far killed more than 199,000 peopl

US President Donald Trump has instructed his administration to temporarily halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump said the WHO "failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable". He said it promoted China's "disinformation" about the virus that likely led to a wider outbreak. The United States is the biggest overall donor to the Geneva-based WHO, contributing more than $400m in 2019, roughly 15 percent of its budget. Reaction to Trump's move was fast and furious worldwide. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Tedros, the director-general of the global health agency, said he regrets Trump's decision to halt funding of the UN body. "This is a time for all of us to be united in our common struggle against a common threat," Tedros told a press conference in Geneva. "When we are divided, the coronavirus explo