Health

UK expects to receive COVID booster advice imminently: Health minister

Britain’s health minister Sajid Javid said on Sunday he expected to receive advice imminently on whether the government can broaden a booster jab program to try to tackle the emergence of the newly identified Omicron coronavirus variant.

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“The other thing that still remains hugely important, but I think it’s fair to say now more important than it was before, is our vaccination program,” Javid told Sky News.

“That is why I have also asked our expert advisers on vaccines called JCVI (the Joint Committee on Vaccination and immunization) to give me very quick advice on broadening, boosting our booster program and I expect to get that advice imminently.”

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World Food Safety Day: ‘Nobody should die from eating food’

Every day, some 1.6 million people worldwide fall ill from eating contaminated food, which kills 420,000 people each year, two UN agencies said on Tuesday.

Health

World must ‘work as one’ to end plastic pollution: Guterres

As international negotiators committed to hammering out a draft treaty by November on ending plastic pollution, the UN chief stressed in his message for World Environment Day on Monday, the importance of curbing the “catastrophic” consequences of waste plastics.

Health

US state abortion bans ‘putting millions of women and girls at risk’

Millions of women and girls across the United States have suffered an alarming deterioration in access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, following the US Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Friday.