On a controversial trip to Taiwan, Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister for 44 tempestuous days, met President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday and called for an “economic NATO” to counter Chinese coercion. Ms. Truss’s visit has been denounced by Beijing, which claims the self-governed island as its territory. China opposes visitsContinue Reading

The World Health Organization on Monday warned against using artificial sweeteners to control body weight or reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases, saying that long-term use is not effective and could pose health risks. These alternatives to sugar, when consumed long term, do not serve to reduce body fat inContinue Reading

As people in wealthy nations snap up booster shots amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the World Health Organization’s leader warned that universal access to extra doses in highly inoculated countries could worsen global vaccine inequality and prolong the pandemic. That imbalance, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general,Continue Reading

Why It Matters: The sharp decline is a victory. The W.H.O.’s declaration is an acknowledgment that the world successfully managed an international outbreak even while still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. The initial response to the outbreak sputtered, much as it did when Covid began to spread. But most countriesContinue Reading

The World Health Organization announced on Friday that it was ending the emergency it declared for Covid-19 more than three years ago, a milestone in the fitful emergence from a pandemic that has killed millions of people around the world and upended daily life in previously unimaginable ways. “It isContinue Reading

The World Health Organization dismissed a lead investigator into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic “following findings of sexual misconduct,” according to an agency spokeswoman. Peter K. Ben Embarek, an expert on food safety and animal-borne diseases, was dismissed last year; the dismissal was reported by The Financial Times onContinue Reading

With the battle for control of Sudan entering its third week, health care services are rapidly unraveling in the nation’s capital, Khartoum, a grim consequence of the brutal fighting that has raised fears the conflict could devolve into a wider humanitarian crisis. The total collapse of the health care systemContinue Reading

The World Health Organization granted emergency authorization to a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Maryland-based Novavax and the Serum Institute of India, opening the door for the vaccine, also called Novavax, to be distributed to lower-income countries around the world. The announcement was made on Friday, about six weeks after theContinue Reading

The World Health Organization’s member states on Wednesday took the first step toward what many governments hope will be a legally binding treaty aimed at strengthening global defenses against pandemics. A rare special session of the W.H.O.’s governing body agreed to set up an intergovernmental negotiating body that is toContinue Reading

The heavily mutated new coronavirus variant was in Europe several days earlier than previously known, health officials said Tuesday, and the number of countries where it has been found increased to at least 20, raising questions about whether the pandemic is about to surge once again. The Netherlands’ National InstituteContinue Reading