GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday appealed for $1.5 billion in funding to respond to the health needs of millions of people caught up in dozens of humanitarian crises around the globe, from Ukraine and Gaza to Afghanistan. We aim to reach some 87 million people with life-saving humanitarian assistance this year, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. To do this, we need support totalling $1.5 billion, and we need this funding to arrive as early as possible and with as much flexibility as possible. A reactive approach is not enough. Tedros said an estimated 166 million people would require health assistance around the world this year, including in the occupied Palestinian territories, Ukraine, Haiti and Sudan. The health emergency requiring the most is taking place in the occupied Palestinian Territories - and Gaza in particular - where Israeli forces have carried out a relentless assault against the enclave in response to a deadly rampage b
(Reuters) - Three UN agencies on Wednesday warned that an ongoing rise in avian flu outbreaks globally raised concerns that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily, and urged countries to strengthen disease surveillance and improve hygiene at poultry farms. Earlier this year, a new H5N1 strain of bird flu that is highly contagious among wild birds explosively spread to new geographical regions, infecting and killing a variety of mammal species and raising fears of a pandemic among humans. However, only about half a dozen cases in people who had close contact with infected birds have been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), and most of those have been mild. We encourage all countries to increase their ability to monitor these viruses and to detect any human cases, said Dr Sylvie Briand, the director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the WHO. The WHO, along with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organisation
By Elvira Pollina MILAN (Reuters) -Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been suffering from chronic blood cancer for some time and is currently in intensive care for a lung infection, his doctors said on Thursday. The 86-year-old, whose media empire has made him a billionaire, was rushed to the intensive care unit of Milan s San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday, heightening concerns over his increasingly fragile health. In their first statement on his condition, doctors Alberto Zangrillo and Fabio Ciceri revealed that Berlusconi had been diagnosed in the past with Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukaemia (CML). They did not specify when the cancer was first spotted, saying only that it was not acute. Silvio Berlusconi is currently in intensive care for the treatment of a lung infection, they said, adding that the illness was related to the cancer. CML affects white blood cells and in most cases cannot be cured, doctors say. Around 70% of men will live for at least five years after
By Laurie Chen BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese military doctor who exposed the full extent of the SARS epidemic when it ripped through Beijing in 2003 has died at the age of 91, according to his friends and local media reports. Jiang Yanyong accused the government of deliberately underreporting the spread of the respiratory disease in an open letter sent to state media in 2003. The disease killed nearly 800 people worldwide. News of his death was not reported in Chinese state media, as is the norm with politically sensitive public figures. Hu Jia, a human rights activist who said he was a longtime friend of Jiang s, told Reuters he died in a Beijing military hospital. Two other family friends of Jiang, Bao Pu and Bao Jian, posted on Twitter about his passing earlier this week. Neither immediately replied to a request for comment from Reuters. Dr. Jiang Yanyong, who exposed the concealment of the SARS epidemic and was known for daring to tell the truth, passed away, Bao Pu wrote on Twitte
By Casey Hall and Bernard Orr SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) -China s sprawling and thinly resourced countryside is racing to beef up medical facilities before hundreds of millions of factory workers return to their families for the Lunar New Year holiday next month from cities where COVID-19 is surging. Having imposed the world s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and relentless testing for three years, China reversed course this month towards living with the virus, leaving its fragile health system overwhelmed. The lifting of restrictions, following widespread protests against them, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts. China officially reported one new COVID death for Wednesday, down from three on Tuesday, but foreign governments and many epidemiologists believe the numbers are much higher, and that more than 1 million people may die next year. China has said it only counts deaths of COV