UN – United Nations

Athletes from 88 countries have gathered in Sochi to compete. As a long-time runner, triathlete, and bike racer, I appreciate the spirit of competitiveness these individuals bring with them.  But the Olympics are about more than competition. They’re about building understanding between people of different cultures and countries – understanding that must be based on respect for human rights. Today, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the International Olympic Committee in Sochi, becoming the first […]

The Olympic Winter Games in Sochi are set to begin on February 7th. The athletes have spent years – sometimes almost their entire lives – preparing for their chance to compete in the Olympics. But travelers to the Sochi Games, and any large mass gathering, also need to be smart about preparing for public health threats. Gerald Rockenschaub, programme manager for country emergency preparedness at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe, answered questions

By U.S. Olympic athletes Kikkan Randall of the U.S. ski team and Alex Deibold of the U.S. snowboard team Every four years, we all get to celebrate the best in winter sports, and this week in Sochi, the Olympics will host some of the most incredible winter athletes in the world on the biggest stage in sports. It’s going to be amazing. But with that also comes the sobering opportunity to remember that if we

Cooking often brings families together and contributes to far more than just our physical sustenance. Yet every year 4 million people die from the health impacts of toxic smoke from cooking over traditional open fires or inefficient cookstoves. To address this challenge, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is working to create a thriving global market for clean cookstoves and fuels. Last week, the Alliance was in Kenya, where nearly 70% of the population uses

For a growing number of South Sudanese refugees, there is a new word for safety: Kakuma. The United Nations’ Kakuma refugee camp sits near the South Sudan border in neighboring Kenya. If that feels a world away, consider this: It is home for more than 100,000 individuals — a population roughly the total size of Charleston, South Carolina. Photo credit: Alex Kamweru/UN Foundation I had the opportunity to visit with Kakuma camp’s residents last week.

By Pascal Barollier, Director of Communications at the GAVI Alliance At the end of January, we were taught a lesson in the power of social media in global health as a striking interactive map of vaccine preventable outbreaks since 2008 went, well, viral on Twitter. By the middle of the week, more than 500,000 people had visited the map, and in an intriguing piece of research, the trail of tweets led all the way back

In the United States, we are given a birth certificate and an official identification number when we are born. We become official citizens. When I turned 16 I got a driver’s license. Many of us will travel overseas and need to apply for a passport. As we live our lives, go to school, visit a doctor, or register to vote, we are able to do these things because we have been given a number that

The World Health Organization (WHO) is generally the first place the world turns for information on potential international health emergencies. In addition to WHO’s roster of health experts and its decades of experience with health threats, it also plays a central role in carrying out the International Health Regulations (IHR), a global framework adopted in 2005 to help improve global public health security. What are the International Health Regulations? A total of 196 countries have

Everybody’s talking about the crazy weather.  The polar vortex walloped the Eastern United States with ice and snow while the West suffers through extreme drought.  Big parts of Britain were hit by record-breaking floods.  January 7 was the hottest day in Australian history, with an average high temperature of 105°F over the entire country. These unusual events are not unusual in themselves – but the pattern is consistent with what scientists have told us about