What We're Reading: Week of May 27
- “Primary health care is where the battle for human health is won and lost.” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros delivered powerful remarks about the importance of primary health care at the opening of this year’s World Health Assembly.
- The road to universal health coverage is taking shape: At WHA, member states agreed to three resolutions around primary health care, community health workers and the High-Level Meeting.
- The "Zero Draft” of the UN Political Resolution on Universal Health Coverage spotlights primary health care, calling it the “most inclusive, effective and efficient approach” to improve health and wellbeing. The first member state consultation on the draft will be held Tuesday, May 28.
- Supporting primary health care innovation is among the smartest ways to reduce health inequalities and achieve universal health coverage, contends the World Bank.
- G20 countries are well-suited to promote better measurement of primary health care improvement, through supporting efforts like PHCPI, notes a British Medical Journal analysis.
- Save the Children launched a new universal health coverage and accountability index that recommends governments prioritize primary health care as the first step toward achieving universal health coverage.
- The WHO hopes to half the number of snakebite deaths and disabilities by 2030, but some experts say the new strategy may not be ambitious enough.
- Algeria and Argentina are officially malaria-free, both having reported their last locally-transmitted cases of malaria in 2013 and 2010 respectively.
- Facebook is tackling epidemics through new disease prevention maps – tools that provide key movement and population density data to the health organizations that respond to disease outbreaks.