Health

 We have lived through another year of the COVID-19 pandemic and a global outbreak of mpox (formerly monkeypox). The people of Ethiopia and Ukraine have been confronted with the death and destruction brought about by war. Ebola struck in Uganda, multiple countries have faced cholera outbreaks, and drought and flooding have significantly increased malnutrition and disease in the greater Horn of Africa and the Sahel. Severe flooding in Pakistan has put an enormous strain on health services.That’s not to mention the multiple other threats to health that people face year...

It was 26 November 2021 that WHO declared that the world was facing a new variant of concern: Omicron. It would go on to change the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.Emerging evidence was quickly shared by scientists from Botswana, Hong Kong and South Africa and discussed in a special meeting of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for Virus Evolution (TAG-VE).Experts at the meeting worried about the large number of mutations present in this variant, which differed greatly from the other variants that had been detected so far. Early data showed Omicron’s...