Health

WHA78, Geneva, 19-27 May 2025Agenda item: 17.1Document: A78/13 Chair, Your Excellencies, Director-General, The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region shoulders one-third of the world’s humanitarian burden, and 15 per cent of our population requires humanitarian assistance. The unfolding crises in Gaza and Sudan—alongside protracted emergencies in Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan—are compounded by ongoing disease outbreaks, revealing the…

WHA78, Geneva, 19-27 May 2025 Agenda item: 20 Document: A78/16 Chair, Your Excellencies, Director-General As outlined in the Director-General’s report, health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory are at crisis levels. In the West Bank, access to healthcare is significantly hindered by movement restrictions, violence, and disruptions to essential services. Nearly 600 days into the…

19 May 2025 Excellencies, Distinguished Colleagues, It is an honour to join you today, and I thank His Excellency the Chair―Dr Saleh al-Hasnawi, Minister of Health of the Republic of Iraq―for this important opportunity. The World Health Organization greatly values its longstanding partnership with the League of Arab States. Our cooperation is rooted in a…

20 May 2025 Agreement’s adoption follows three years of intensive negotiation launched due to gaps and inequities identified in national and global COVID-19 response. Agreement boosts global collaboration to ensure stronger, more equitable response to future pandemics. Next steps include negotiations on Pathogen Access and Benefits Sharing system. Member States of the World Health Organization…

Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – 19 May 2025 – The WHO Foundation has signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tawuniya, Saudi Arabia’s largest insurance provider, marking its first-ever corporate partnership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. This milestone agreement establishes a framework for advancing regional health priorities in alignment with the…

15 May 2025, Cairo, Egypt – The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean has launched a landmark innovation designed to transform how countries prepare for and respond to health emergencies. The All-Hazard Information Management (AIM) Toolkit leverages generative artificial intelligence to drastically reduce the time needed to produce critical response documents…

12 May 2025 Good morning, and a very warm welcome to all of you. As we commemorate International Nurses Day, we honour the dedication, resilience, and leadership of nurses across the Eastern Mediterranean Region and beyond. Nurses and midwives are the backbone of our health systems―comprising more than half of the global health workforce. Today,…

12 May 2025 Your Excellency Dr Jaleela bint Al-Sayed Jawad Hassan, Distinguished guests, It is an honour to address this important forum, which reflects the shared commitment of the Kingdom of Bahrain, the League of Arab States, and WHO to equitable access to essential medicines and the strengthening of pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing in our…

13 May 2025 Thank you for joining today’s WHO/EMRO press briefing. I always appreciate the opportunity to connect with our media colleagues. I will begin with an update on some of the most acute emergencies in our Region. We remain deeply concerned about the catastrophic situation in Gaza, with more than 52,000 deaths and nearly…

12 May 2025 – Cairo/Geneva/Jerusalem, The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid, including food, in the ongoing blockade. The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and…