WHO & Regional Offices [to 7 January 2017]

140th session of the Executive Board
23 January–1 February 2017, Geneva

Working as one UN for environmental health
3 January 2017 – There are many compelling reasons to clean up the global environment. One of the most pressing is that a polluted environment is deadly: every year, 1 in 4 people die from diseases associated with air, water or soil pollution. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and WHO are creating a global mechanism to bring together the environment and health sectors.
Commentary

Highlights
Response to trauma cases saves hundreds of lives in Iraq
January 2017 – Since 17 October 2016, WHO has supported the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government with emergency lifesaving health services, including emergency medicines and other medical supplies like trauma and surgery kits.

Aid workers share experiences of evacuations from eastern Aleppo, Syria
January 2017 – Intensified fighting in eastern Aleppo starting in July 2016 resulted in thousands of people injured and killed, and has deprived the civilian population of essential services, including health care. The first evacuations from besieged neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo took place 15 December 2016.

Weekly Epidemiological Record, 6 January 2017, vol. 92, 1 (pp. 1–12)
:: Status of new vaccine introduction – worldwide, September 2016
:: Detection of Sabin-like type 2 poliovirus after global cessation of trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine in Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, India, August–September 2016

:: WHO Regional Offices
Selected Press Releases, Announcements
WHO African Region AFRO
No new announcements identified.

WHO Region of the Americas PAHO
:: Toward the end of polio: The vaccine ‘switch’ in the Americas (12/29/2016)
:: 2016: the year Zika evolved from an emergency into a long-term public health challenge (12/29/2016)

WHO South-East Asia Region SEARO
No new announcements identified.

WHO European Region EURO
:: Experiences of evacuations from eastern Aleppo, Syria 06-01-2017

WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region EMRO
:: WHO’s response to trauma cases saves hundreds of lives in Iraq
5 January 2017 – Since 17 October 2016, WHO has supported the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government with emergency lifesaving health services, including emergency medicines and other medical supplies like trauma and surgery kits. These supplies are meant to support the increasing number of trauma cases received at trauma stabilization points and en route to the final points of performing surgery.
:: WHO welcomes continued support from the Government of France and European Union Member States 6 January 2017
:: WHO provides lifesaving HIV medicines in Benghazi, Libya 3 January 2017

WHO Western Pacific Region
No new announcements identified.

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