Tag: World Health Organisation;
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Vaping law reform: New South Wales in a federal context
There is a lot of vaping-related law reform activity going on in Australia at the moment. This (long) post reviews NSW vaping laws and provides a baseline for understanding the changes that are underway, both at NSW (State) and Commonwealth level. Background The failure to enforce nicotine control laws, together with ludicrously low penalties, have…
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Regulating harmful cross-border advertising: can it be done?
How do governments prevent their citizens from being exposed to harmful online advertising which originates outside of their jurisdiction? Such advertising is referred to as cross-border advertising. Advertisers have taken advantage of a digitised, interconnected world to reach broad audiences (including children) across national borders.
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Alcohol causes 3 million deaths each year. Eliminating conflicts of interest is vital to bringing this number down
Alcohol causes three million deaths each year, including 13.5% of deaths amongst those aged 20-39 years. But the personal and economic costs of alcohol-related harm are not met by the alcohol industry.
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Another step forward for the Pacific Legislative Framework
Pacific Island Countries and Territories have some of the world’s highest rates of health risks. In response, the Public Health Division of the Pacific Community (SPC) has been driving an initiative for tackling the key risk factors: the Pacific Legislative Framework.
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Prospects for the World Health Assembly’s pandemic instrument
The World Health Assembly (WHA) has established an intergovernmental negotiating body to “draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”. The Assembly’s decision was made at the special session of the WHA, convened for the specific purpose of considering the benefits of such an instrument. But…
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The tricky business of Covid-19 reviews & origins investigations
Dr Dominic Dwyer, Australia’s member of the WHO-convened Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2, won’t remember me, but he was generous and helpful when I interviewed him as a PhD student in the early 1990s. His more recent comments to the media illustrate the challenges of attempting to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 as…
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Legal management of the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Australia
On 31 January the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), following the advice of the Emergency Committee. (See here). Under the International Health Regulations, which govern global management of infectious disease outbreaks, a declaration that a PHEIC exists…
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Australia and the language of fire
There are currently 100 fires burning across New South Wales. Fifty of them are uncontained, as the weather swings between baking hot, and blustery southerlies. Here in Sydney, the sky looks yellow. Soot is washing up on Sydney beaches, and clouds of dust are turning New Zealand glaciers pink. According to the Bureau of Meteorology…
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International Guidelines on Human Rights, Healthy Diets and Sustainable Food Systems: could they make a difference?
The BMJ has published an Opinion calling on the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr Michelle Bachelet, to jointly initiate a process to develop International Guidelines on Human Rights, Healthy Diets, and Sustainable Food Systems. 180 signatories from 38 countries have supported…
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The World Health Organisation, the International Health Regulations, ebola and other pandemics: seminar announcement
The International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) are the primary global instrument for responding to, and seeking to prevent and limit the impact of public health emergencies of international concern, including communicable diseases with pandemic potential. The International Health Regulations are legally binding on all World Health Organization (WHO) Member States, including Australia. The IHR were…
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Update and summary guide to the WHO report: Advancing the right to health: the vital role of law
In September 2018 the World Health Organisation published an Update and Summary Guide to the report Advancing the Right to Health: the Vital Role of Law. [See here for a previous post on the full report]. The summary Guide, like the full report, was a collaboration between the World Health Organisation, International Development Law Organisation,…
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Trump: the war on breastfeeding
The New York Times reports that US officials threatened to unleash trade sanctions and withdraw military aid from Ecuador unless it withdrew a resolution at May’s World Health Assembly calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding”. The article is worth reading in its entirety. As the father of a currently breastfeeding infant, I…
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A Foundation for a smoke-free world…funded by a cigarette multinational: more smoke and mirrors?
The Swiss like butter on both sides of their toast. Headquartered in Lausanne, half an hour’s train ride from the World Health Organisation in Geneva, you’ll find the headquarters of the world’s most profitable tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI). Makers of Marlboro and other global brands. A few years ago, at the end of…
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Dr David Nabarro, WHO D-G candidate, on a sugar tax
The World Health Organisation may be in for interesting times if Dr David Nabarro becomes the next Director-General. Only three candidates are now in the contest. Two of them were Commissioners of the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity: Dr Nabarro, from the UK, and Dr Sania Nishtar, from Pakistan (who was Co-Chair of the…
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Advancing the Right to Health: the Vital Role of Law
More than 20 years ago, Chris Reynolds, an Australian pioneer in our understanding of public health law, wrote that: “law is a powerful tool, as potent as any of the medical technologies available to treat disease”, and yet “our understanding of the potential of [public health law]…to help…citizens to lead longer and healthier lives, is…
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UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel: a bold vision for improving access to essential medicines, or a “deep disappointment”?
The UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Access to Medicines published its final report on 14 September 2016. It took just two days for the US State Department to dismiss the report in a strongly-worded rebuke. The Panel’s recommendations cover a wide area, including countries’ use of the flexibilities contained in TRIPS [the World Trade…
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WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity presents final report and recommendations
The World Health Organisation’s Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity, appointed by WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan in 2014, has now formally presented its final report. The Commission was co-chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Dr Sania Nishtar, the founder and President of Heartfile, a…
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Is your summer barbeque under fire? Chewing over the evidence on meat and cancer, and digesting the implications for regulation
The report We’ve now had a few weeks to chew over the latest report linking food and cancer. Only this time it wasn’t a puff-piece in your Sunday newspaper, but an extremely comprehensive report from IARC, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. After a systematic review, IARC’s findings on the links…
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World Health Organisation publishes new report on overweight, obesity, diabetes and the law
Posted by Jenny Kaldor and Roger Magnusson This is the view when you look out the front gates of the World Health Organisation’s regional headquarters in Manila. A few blocks away, in the processed food aisles of the supermarket, parents are encouraged to purchase “nutrition power for kids”. The Western Pacific Region, which includes Australia,…
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