Health

The UN health agency said on Friday that it is sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza after the discovery of the highly infectious disease in sewage samples. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the vaccines will be administered to children in the coming weeks. He noted that no cases of polio have been recorded yet but without immediate action, it was “just a matter of time before it reaches the ...

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday released the first-ever guidelines for those seeking to quit tobacco use, recommending a range of initiatives, treatments and digital interventions. These recommendations are expected to benefit over 750 million adults who want to quit all forms of tobacco including cigarettes, waterpipes, smokeless tobacco products, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco and heated tobacco products. “This guideline marks ...

3news has gathered that the Global Fund has expressed its displeasure with the ongoing situation regarding the non-clearance of its donor-funded essential health commodities at the country’s port for over a year. The fund, at the just-ended World Health Summit in Geneva, sent a strong signal to the Ghanaian delegation made up of members of the parliamentary select committee, the ...

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday signed a controversial National Health Insurance bill into law, just two weeks ahead of a highly-contested general election. His ruling African National Congress is widely expected to lose its majority in parliament in the vote, for the first time since the end of apartheid. The new law aims to provide quality universal health ...

In a significant step forward for malaria prevention in Africa, three countries—Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone—today launched a large-scale rollout of the life-saving malaria vaccine targeting millions of children across the three West African nations. The vaccine rollout, announced on World Malaria Day, seeks to further scale up vaccine deployment in the African region.    Today’s launch brings to eight the ...

Doctors in Gaza have delivered a baby girl from the womb of her mother who lay dying from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike on the southern city of Rafah on Saturday. Sabreen’s father and her 4-year-old sister were also killed in the attack When emergency responders learned that her mother was 30 weeks pregnant, doctors at Kuwaiti hospital, where ...

African women are 130 times more likely to die due to pregnancy or childbirth complications than women in Europe and Northern America, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) said in a new report published on Wednesday. Interwoven Lives, Threads of Hope: Ending inequalities in sexual and reproductive health and rights, reveals that more than half of all preventable ...

The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital admits over one thousand stroke patients every year. The figure is in contrast to some 200 cases recorded 40 years ago. A time-bound and minimally damaged treatment has been launched at the hospital to improve stroke treatment.  A decreased blood flow stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or ...

The vaccine shortage comes as southern Africa battles a protracted cholera outbreak which has killed 700 people in Zambia alone. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said that the shortage has affected its teams trying to respond to outbreaks in more than 16 countries. Public health experts have urged manufacturers to speed up the production of the oral vaccine. All drugs ...

More than 50 percent of expectant and new mothers experience perinatal depression, a situational analysis of mental health disorders related to pregnancy has shown. Among the number, between 13 and 17 percent develop suicidal intentions. The analysis was conducted by the Ghana Health Service (GHS), in partnership with the Ministry of Health (MoH), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UK-Foreign ...