Pins matching place:"World Health Organization"

The World Health Assembly certified that smallpox had been wiped from the earth - the only human disease ever eradicated. The last natural case had been in Somalia in 1977, and the campaign that found it had traced and vaccinated outwards from every case for a decade.

Eight months after the first cases in Guinea, the WHO declared the Ebola epidemic in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern. It became the largest Ebola outbreak in history: more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Six weeks after declaring a public health emergency, the WHO's Director-General told a Geneva briefing that COVID-19 could be characterised as a pandemic - 118,000 cases in 114 countries at the time. Most of the world's lockdowns began within a fortnight.

Three years and three months after declaring it, the WHO ended COVID-19's status as a public health emergency of international concern. The Director-General was careful to say the virus was not gone - only that it no longer needed emergency governance.

WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization holds its autumn meeting on 5-8 October 2026 at WHO headquarters in hybrid format, by invitation only; the agenda is to be published nearer the time.

WHO's IHR Emergency Committee on the Bundibugyo Ebola epidemic is due to reconvene, roughly three months after its 18 August meeting, to say whether the emergency still stands. WHO counts 7,890 confirmed cases and 3,799 deaths in the DRC as of 23 September 2026.

WHO extended the polio Temporary Recommendations for a further three months from 21 August 2026, so the IHR Emergency Committee is expected to review whether polio remains a public health emergency around late November. Wild poliovirus type 1 stays confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization meets on 15-18 March 2027 at WHO headquarters in hybrid format, by invitation only.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative's extended strategy sets certification of wild poliovirus type 1 eradication by the end of 2027, with transmission in Afghanistan and Pakistan meant to stop first. Both countries still report cases.