Who News

Taipei - With 6,000 Chinese travelers arriving in Taiwan every day, the inevitable has happened. After a visit to Shanghai, a Taiwanese business man was found to be infected on his return. Taiwan has upped surveillance of flights from several Chinese provinces.

A group of influential healthcare professionals from around Southeast Asia are teaming together to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the region.

Frazer Hines has signalled his desire to reprise the Doctor Who-companion role he first played in the BBC’s flagship science-fiction drama series 47 years ago.

Global health campaigners have said that $1.6 billion a year is needed to fight tuberculosis and that the current lack of funding is hampering progress made against the world’s second-deadliest infectious disease.

WHO's European Health Report 2012 reveals that while Europeans are living longer lives, the trend could be reversed due to the economic crisis forcing governments to cut spending on health.

Bridgewater - With a couple of weeks into the brand new year, the number of deaths attributed to cancer is approximately 325,000. It is projected that by 2015, the estimated number of people dying from cancer will reach nine million and 13.1 million in 2030.

Sydney - Beijing’s air pollution went off the scale recently. It was 8.5 times higher than WHO danger levels. Citizens were advised to avoid exercise, and that was it for health responses. 3.2 million people died of air pollution in Asia in 2010. Result? Apathy.

Lyon - French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur announced this week that it would soon be bringing to the market a vaccine to counter Dengue fever, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes and which is estimated to threaten almost half the world’s population.

In the last six weeks more than 100 people have died from yellow fever in the Darfur region of Sudan. Today WHO warned that the disease could spread across the war torn nation.

The World Health Organization is prepared to tackle a new challenge thrown up after a new virus related to the deadly SARS had infected a 49-year-old Qatari from a recent trip to Saudi Arabia where another man with an almost identical virus had died.