WHO & Regional Offices [to 14 May 2022]
https://www.who.int/news
13 May 2022
Departmental news
WHO launches new Mortality Database visualization portal

13 May 2022
Departmental news
TB laboratory manuals issued to support the implementation of WHO-recommended diagnostics

12 May 2022
News release
WHO and MPP announce agreement with NIH for COVID-19 health technologies

12 May 2022
Departmental news
New report shows progress and missed opportunities in the control of NCDs at the national level

10 May 2022
Statement
World leaders urged to make firm commitments at Second Global COVID-19 Summit by ACT-Accelerator agency leads

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WHO Director General Speeches [selected]
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches
Selected
12 May 2022
Speech
WHO Deputy Director-General’s speech – Partnering to build sustainable Health Eco-System in Africa, African-European Collaboration

12 May 2022
Speech
WHO Director-General’s live speech at 2nd Global COVID Summit – 12 May 2022

10 May 2022
Speech
WHO Director-General’s remarks at the Special Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe — 10 May 2022

10 May 2022
Speech
WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the WHO press conference – 10 May 2022

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WHO Regional Offices
Selected Press Releases, Announcements
WHO African Region
:: Southern Africa faces uptick in COVID-19 cases
12 May 2022 Brazzaville – Southern Africa is facing an upsurge in COVID-19 cases for the third consecutive week as the winter season in the region approaches. The uptick has broken a two-month-long decline in overall infections recorded across the continent.
The sub-region recorded 46 271 cases in the week ending on 8 May 2022, marking a 32% increase over the week before.

WHO Region of the Americas PAHO
:: 10 May 2022 Technical Note: acute, severe hepatitis of unknown origin in children
This technical note follows the previous reports regarding the event of acute, severe hepatitis of unknown origin in children disseminated by the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) on 23 April 2022 (two reports), 25 April 2022, and 29 April 2022. This event was first reported by the United Kingdom…

WHO South-East Asia Region SEARO
No new digest content identified.

WHO European Region EURO
:: Two million confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in the European Region 12-05-2022
:: Setting up a behavioural insights unit – WHO launches a set of considerations to support countries 12-05-2022
:: “What stays with me is the feeling of helplessness” – on International Nurses Day, a young nurse recalls her time on a COVID-19 ward at the beginning of the pandemic 12-05-2022

WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region EMRO
:: Palestinian Ministry of Health launches polio vaccination campaign to boost immunity in Bethlehem and Jerusalem 13 May 2022
:: Somalia launches WHO emergency health response plan for drought 11 May 2022
:: Environmental surveillance for poliovirus introduced in Iraq 10 May 2022

WHO Western Pacific Region
No new digest content identified.

 

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Disease Outbreak News (DONs)
Latest WHO Disease Outbreak News (DONs), providing information on confirmed acute public health events or potential events of concern.

13 May 2022 | Lassa fever – Guinea

12 May 2022 | Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) – Qatar

9 May 2022 | Avian Influenza A(H3N8) – China

 

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WHO Events
https://www.who.int/news-room/events/1
[Selected]
Virtual Meeting of the Global Multisectoral and Multi-stakeholder Platform to end TB
17 May 2022 13:00 – 16:00 CET

Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly WHA 75
22-28 May 2022
:: Provisional agenda A75/1 Rev.1

 

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New WHO Publications
https://www.who.int/publications/i
Selected Titles
13 May 2022
Practical manual of processing stool samples for diagnosis of childhood TB

13 May 2022
Line probe assays for detection of drug-resistant tuberculosis: interpretation and reporting manual for…

13 May 2022
Vaccines against influenza: WHO position paper – May 2022

13 May 2022
Manual for selection of molecular WHO recommended rapid diagnostic tests for detection of tuberculosis…

12 May 2022
Emergency in Ukraine: external situation report #11, published 12 May 2022: reporting period: 5–11 May…

10 May 2022
Health systems resilience toolkit: a WHO global public health good to support building and strengthening…

10 May 2022
The WHO global task force on TB impact measurement, May 2022

9 May 2022
Estimating global and country-specific excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic
Overview
Estimating the true mortality burden of COVID-19 for every country in the world is a difficult, but crucial, public health endeavor. Attributing deaths, direct or indirect, to COVID-19 is problematic. A more attainable target is the “excess deaths”, the number of deaths in a particular period, relative to that expected during “normal times”, and we estimate this for all countries on a monthly time scale for 2020 and 2021. The excess mortality requires two numbers, the total deaths and the expected deaths, but the former is unavailable for many countries, and so modeling is required for these countries, and the expected deaths are based on historic data and we develop a model for producing expected estimates for all countries. We allow for uncertainty in the modeled expected numbers when calculating the excess.
We describe the methods that were developed to produce World Health Organization (WHO) excess death estimates. To achieve both interpretability and transparency we developed a relatively simple overdispersed Poisson count framework, within which the various data types can be modeled. We use data from countries with national monthly data to build a predictive log-linear regression model with time-varying coefficients for countries without data. For a number of countries, subnational data only are available, and we construct a multinomial model for such data, based on the assumption that the fractions of deaths in specific sub-regions remain approximately constant over time. Our inferential approach is Bayesian, with the covariate predictive model being implemented in the fast and accurate INLA software. The subnational modeling was carried out using MCMC in Stan or in some nonstandard data situations, using our own MCMC code. Based on our modeling, the 95% interval estimate for global excess mortality, over 2020–2021, is 13.3–16.6 million.