London, May 1, 2021 (AltAfrica)-The World Health Organisation (WHO) has given the go-ahead for emergency use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The mRNA vaccine from the US manufacturer joins vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson in receiving the WHO’s emergency use listing. Similar approvals for China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines are expected in the ...

London, April 1, 2021 (AltAfrica)-The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday discouraged the use of anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin to treat COVID-19, noting that the drug’s efficacy in treating the respiratory disease is of “very low certainty.” Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug approved for the treatment of parasitic infections, including strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis in humans. READ ...

London, March 27, 2021 (AltAfrica)-Public health officials in Washington state are monitoring 23 people for Ebola who recently travelled from the West African countries of Guinea and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Department of Health said in a news release that officials believe the individuals are at low risk of Ebola in Washington but ...

London, Feb. 27, 2021 (AltAfrica)-A global Oxygen emergency taskforce team has been launched by a WHO led consortium to address shortages of the commodity used in the treatment of severe coronavirus Oxygen is an essential medicine, and despite being vital for the effective treatment of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, access in LMICs is limited due to ...

London, Feb. 13, 2021 (AltAfrica)-The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it has continued to see a decline in COVID-19 cases globally, with a 17 per cent drop compared with last week. The WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, in a speech posted on its website on Friday, stated that the number of deaths had also reduced. ...

London, Feb. 11, 2021 (AltAfrica)-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective and should be deployed widely, including in countries where the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce its efficacy, a World Health Organization panel said on Wednesday. AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine is in the final stages of review for a World Health Organization emergency-use ...

London, Feb. 9, 2021 (AltAfrica)-The global cancer landscape  is changing, according to WHO  experts. Breast cancer has now overtaken lung cancer as the world’s mostly commonly-diagnosed cancer, according to statistics released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) n the past two decades, the overall number of people diagnosed with cancer nearly doubled, ...

London, Feb. 7, 2021 (AltAfrica)-Despite clinical trials revealing the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, a number of people across the globe remain hesitant about being administered with the newly developed vaccines, thereby making the fight against the Covid-19 disease even more difficult. According to a sample survey by Ipsos Mori, approximately 46% of the ...

London, Jan. 26, 2021 (AltAfrica)-The World Health Organization (WHO) issued fresh clinical advice on Tuesday for treating COVID patients, including those displaying persistent symptoms after recovery, and also said it advised using low-dose anti-coagulants to prevent blood clots. “The other things in the guidance that are new are that COVID patients at home should have ...

London, Jan. 23, 2021 (AltAfrica)-COVAX, the global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, has announced the signing of an advance purchase agreement for new 140 million doses of vaccines Of the new purchase agreement, 40 million doses will come from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidate, which has already received ...