WHO advocates for solidarity to paint a healthier and safer future
29 January 2024, Cairo, Egypt – To mark the World Health Organization’s 75th anniversary, the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean hosted a networking and partner and staff appreciation event last night, at the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo, under the theme “Painting a healthier and safer future together”.
The aim was to renew commitment to our shared regional goal of Health for All by All. The event also highlighted WHO’s efforts to promote primary health care and advance universal health coverage to ensure that no one is left behind, even in the context of the ongoing health emergencies across the ...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 30, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Leadership roundtable event on women ’s health: addressing women’s cancers in the Eastern ...
18 January 2024 – Cairo, Egypt – The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population, in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean successfully organized a landmark event as part of the Presidential Initiative on Women’s Health. Held on 18 January 2024 at the Hilton Heliopolis Hotel in Cairo, this roundtable event coincided with the 16th Annual Breast, Gynecological and Immunoncology International Cancer Conference forum and addressed the escalating challenges of breast and cervical cancer in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
Organized under the auspices of His Excellency Professor Khaled A...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 24, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO and partners bring fuel to Al-Shifa, as remaining hospitals in Gaza face growing threats
Cairo, Geneva, Jerusalem, 23 January 2024 – WHO and partners completed another high-risk mission on Monday to resupply fuel to the Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people remain cut off from aid. Across the Gaza Strip, the few remaining hospitals find themselves in ever more dire circumstances, with hostilities often preventing access for patients and supplies, and health workers managing on little rest and scarce supplies.
The mission was carried out along with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Department of Safety and Security, and Médecins S...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 23, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Dr Hanan Balkhy is appointed WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean
23 January 2024, Geneva – The WHO Executive Board, currently holding its 154th session in Geneva, has appointed Dr Hanan Balkhy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean. This follows her nomination by the WHO Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean on 10 October 2023.
Dr Balkhy takes up her appointment on 1 February 2024, for a term of 5 years. She will be the first woman to become WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean.
In her acceptance speech, Dr Balkhy mentioned the many challenges the world is experiencing – all of which have significant implicat...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 23, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Young health professionals combat antimicrobial resistance
23 January 2024 – The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region has some of the highest and fastest-growing rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally, owing to widespread antibiotic misuse and overuse. Nearly 1.3 million people are already dying as a direct result of AMR worldwide. High rates of drug resistance undermine many health efforts and make health care more complex, expensive and risky.
The AMR unit in the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean is currently strengthening the AMR response through multiple intersectional strategies. These focus on key stakeholders identified at various levels and priorit...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 23, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Regional Director opening remarks at WHO/EMRO press briefing
15 January 2024
Good afternoon from WHO’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in Cairo, Egypt.
We are now at the 100-day mark since the hostilities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory escalated.
In this short period of time, Gazans – previously waking up every day in their beds to get ready to go to school or work, have family dinners together, and make plans for the future – have lost their closest loved ones, homes and belongings, livelihoods, and most basic human rights.
Almost 85% of the entire population of Gaza 1.9 million people – are now displaced and living in overcrowded shelter...
Source: WHO EMRO News - January 15, 2024 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO teams deliver supplies to hospitals in Northern and Southern Gaza
New mass displacement of Palestinians fleeing fighting, health facilities crammed with people seeking refuge, food. Photo credit: WHO
27 December 2023 – Gaza: World Health Organization teams have undertaken high-risk missions to deliver supplies, with partners, to hospitals in Northern and Southern Gaza witnessing intense hostilities in their vicinity, high patient loads and overcrowding caused by people displaced by the conflict seeking refuge.
“Today I repeat my call on the international community to take urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril facing the population of Gaza and jeopardizing the ability of humanit...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 28, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO builds health emergency response capacities
A WHO expert explains the R programming language tool during the training. Photo credit: WHO/Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment Unit25 December 2023, Cairo, Egypt – Data management skills can help experts to better handle health emergency data and respond to public health challenges. To strengthen data management in health emergency response, WHO conducted the Regional Training on Capacity Development of Data Analytics and Dissemination, using R software, in Amman, Jordan, on 3–7 December 2023.
The training was attended by epidemiologists and surveillance officers from the Eastern Mediterranean Public He...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 25, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Lethal combination of hunger and disease to lead to more deaths in Gaza
People displaced from their homes waiting for food at Al-Shaboura Camp, in the centre of Rafa, Gaza on 17–18 December 2023. Photo credit: WHO
21 December 2023 – Hunger is ravaging Gaza, and this is expected to increase illness across the Strip, most acutely among children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and older people.
In new estimates released today, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) global partnership, which includes WHO, said Gaza is facing “catastrophic levels of food insecurity,” with the risk of famine “increasing each day.”
An unprecedented 93% of the population i...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 21, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Opening remarks, UN Palais briefing, 21 December 2023
Dr Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative on the occupied Palestinian territorySean Casey, WHO Emergency Medical Teams coordinator
Yesterday, 20 December 2023, in another high-risk joint mission, a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN partners, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), reached Al Ahli Arab hospital and Al Shifa hospital in the north of Gaza.
The initial plan was to deliver fuel to both facilities, but had to shift to supplies only due to lack ...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 21, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO and IARC: 10 years of collaboration to control cancer
20 December 2023 – WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) continue to work together to improve cancer surveillance systems in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region. The aim is to improve reporting and surveillance systems and the quality of cancer-related data – ultimately to contribute to cancer control. Such efforts support the millions of people in the Region at risk of or living with cancer.
IARC and the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean have just celebrated 10 years of collaboration to support cancer surveillance in the Region. In their sights for the next decade are further...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 20, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
Regional Director statement for media briefing
19 December 2023
Thank you all for joining us.
This is my last media briefing before the year ends, and I am speaking to you today with the heaviest heart as I, like all of us here, witness unimaginable suffering.
Our region of over half a billion people is home to 38% of the global population in need of humanitarian aid, which means over 140 million.
These numbers represent the everyday tragedies experienced by the people of Syria, Afghanistan and Morocco after earthquakes, the lived horrors of the people of Libya after catastrophic flooding, drought in the Horn of Africa, rapidly worsening conflict in Sudan and, of c...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 19, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO delivers health supplies to Al-Shifa Hospital, appeals for continued access to address ...
17 December 2023 — WHO staff participated in a joint UN mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in north Gaza on 16 December to deliver health supplies and assess the situation in the facility. Partners on today’s mission included OCHA, UNDSS, and UNMAS. The team delivered medicines and surgical supplies, orthopedic surgery equipment, and anesthesia materials and drugs to the hospital.
Al-Shifa Hospital, currently minimally functional, needs to urgently resume at least basic operations to continue serving the thousands in need of lifesaving health care.
Once the most important and largest referral hospital in Gaza, Al-Shifa now...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 16, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
WHO calls for protection of humanitarian space in Gaza following serious incidents in high-risk ...
12 December 2023 – Cairo, Geneva, Jerusalem, WHO reiterates its call for the protection of health care and humanitarian assistance in Gaza, following military checkpoint delays and detention of health partners during a mission to transfer critically-ill patients and deliver supplies to a hospital in northern Gaza. During the mission, a patient reportedly died.
On 9 December 2023, a WHO team, in collaboration with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and with support from the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS)...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 12, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
RD ’s intervention for the special session on the health conditions in the occupied ...
Geneva, 10 December 2023
Dear colleagues, ladies, and gentlemen,
I would like to start by asking for a minute of silence in memory of our WHO colleague Dima Alhaj and all the humanitarian workers who have been killed in Gaza, some with several of their family members, over the past two months.
WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region – plagued by some of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies – is home to almost 40% of all people in need of aid globally. People in our Region, the majority women and children, are some of the most vulnerable in the world, with too many deprived of their most basic human rights...
Source: WHO EMRO News - December 10, 2023 Category: Middle East Health Source Type: news
