Coronavirus Outbreak
Posted on
For several weeks now, world health agencies and media outlets have been informing the public about the risks and spread of the coronavirus — 2019-nCoV — first discovered in late December in China’s Hubei Province.
Category: Global Health
WHO Releases Global Health Challenges
Posted on
Solving the climate crisis. Stopping infectious diseases. Preparing for epidemics. Training health workers. These issues and more make up the World Health Organization’s (WHO) newly issued 13 global health challenges which we face in the next decade.
WHO Declares 2020 the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife
Posted on
Nurses and midwives play a vital role in providing health services to people in low-resource communities where doctors are in alarmingly short supply. To honor their work, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners named 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife.
Easily Overlooked Diseases Pose Danger in 2020
Posted on
The good news: Major infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria are less likely to shorten or take people’s lives today due to medical and healthcare advances. The bad news: Less prominent, “second-tier” diseases such as polio and dengue are on the rise — even though they are easily preventable.
WiRED Previews Community Health Worker Training Program
Posted on
Imagine this: You’re taken seriously ill, have no idea what’s wrong with you, and there isn’t a doctor for 75 miles. Imagine this: You’re pregnant, are having severe headaches and blurred vision, and no one in your village knows what’s wrong with you.
Holiday Greetings from WiRED
Posted on
All of us at WiRED International would like to wish happy holidays to the many people who have become part of our family since we began our work 22 years ago: doctors and nurses, community health workers and people in low-resource areas who have used our training materials to advance their knowledge of medicine and community health.
Stay Healthy This Holiday Season
Posted on
The holiday season is here — but so are the germs that bring colds, coughs and flu.
WiRED Notes National Public Health Week
Posted on
The American Public Health Association (APHA) created National Public Health Week to promote important public health ideas, contributions and issues. This year, APHA will focus on six public health topics: (1) healthy communities, (2) violence prevention, (3) rural health, (4) technology and public health, (5) climate change, and (6) global health. Four of these themes touch on WiRED International’s mission to bring free health learning education to underserved communities worldwide.
WHO Names Top Ten Threats to Global Health
Posted on
On January 21, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a list of ten threats (see sidebar) impacting global health, which WHO and its partners will focus on in 2019. According to WHO, “The world is facing multiple health challenges. These range from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the health impacts of environmental pollution and climate change and multiple humanitarian crises.”
Climate Change, Pollution and Health
Posted on
Many of WiRED’s board members, staff and volunteers live in California, and, as I write this essay, we are holed up in our homes, able to venture outside only for chores and obligations we cannot avoid. When I worked in Iraq and stayed in safe-houses, it was sometimes the same.