Category: Health & Well Being

By J Nastranis NEW YORK (IDN) – In a significant move to mobilise global support, the United Nations, Project Everyone and 72 Films are launching ‘Nations United – Urgent Solutions for Urgent Times’. A first of its kind film has been released September 19 on the UN YouTube channel and global broadcast networks. The importance […]

By J. Nastranis NEW YORK (IDN) – A new UN report has underlined the importance of biodiversity in addressing climate change, and long-term food security, and concluded that action to protect biodiversity is essential to prevent future pandemics. The fifth edition of the UN’s Global Biodiversity Outlook report, released on September 15, has warned: “The […]

By Rosemary DiCarlo UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Following are extensive excerpts from Ms DiCarlo’s briefing to the Security Council on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on peace and security. NEW YORK (IDN) – It is sobering to realize that the risks the Secretary-General identified to this Council on 2 July are […]

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s former president, and Helen Clark, New Zealand’s former prime minister, are to head the newly formed Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.  The announcement follows the Trump administration’s formal notification to the […]

By UN News NEW YORK (IDN) – As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world, Latin America and the Caribbean have become a “hotspot of the pandemic”, the UN chief said on July 8, releasing a new policy initiative on how best to recover in a region already embroiled in poverty, hunger, unemployment and inequality. […]

News briefs compiled by Suresh Jaura* TORONTO | NEW DELHI (IDN) – The focus of news in Indian media in the second half of June was on the start of human trials by India’s ‘first’ indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, a nod to Indian start-ups to participate in space activities, emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi on June […]

By J Nastranis NEW YORK (IDN) — Never before has there been a more pressing need for accurate, verified information as in the current situation marked by the Coronavirus spreading its tentacles around the world. Like the virus itself, Misinformation about COVID-19 spreads rapidly from person-to-person and heightens the risk to health disseminating fear and […]

Viewpoint by Roseline Orwa * BONDO, Kenya (IDN) – COVID-19, the deadly pandemic that has upended our world, is also, according to a new report, “a widow-making machine”. The emerging scientific evidence that many more men than women are dying from COVID-19 shows that the coronavirus crisis is creating new widows even as global economic […]

By UN Women NEW YORK (IDN) – Although the Pacific has largely been spared by the spread of the disease relative to other regions around the world – with Fiji hardest hit of the six countries the UN Women’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls programme works in, at 18 confirmed cases – all of […]

By Carla McKirdy This report by Carla McKirdy first appeared in Africa Renewal, a magazine published by the United Nations in New York. The writer is Associate Information Management Officer at the United Nations, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ADDIS ABABA (IDN) – As part of a coordinated approach to strengthen developing countries’ responses to COVID-19, as […]