The COVID-19 pandemic that gripped the world in 2020 was a watershed event; it changed people’s lives the world over.

Around the world, people are preparing to choke their way through what is called ‘the season of smog’, when farmers burn their fields to make way for new crops.

In the south of Madagascar, known as the Grand Sud, hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from one of the worst droughts in the region in 40 years, the most senior UN official in the country has said, warning that the population is facing a severe humanitarian crisis.

As the global aid community marked World Humanitarian Day on Thursday, UN chief António Guterres paid tribute to all those who help people in need and urged support for the day’s #TheHumanRace campaign.

During Wednesday’s World Health Organization briefing on COVID-19, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for funding to fight the spread of the deadly Delta variant while also asking wealthy countries to suspend plans to provide booster shots.

The delivery of lifesaving aid and medical supplies to millions of Afghans must not be cut, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, citing a more than threefold rise in the number of trauma cases.

Climate-related and geophysical events resulted in the loss of 312,000 lives and directly affected more than 277 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, a new report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) revealed on Tuesday.

The vaccination against Ebola of high-risk populations began on Monday in Côte d’Ivoire following the discovery of an outbreak in the country three days ago.

The damage to people and livelihoods caused by climate change is happening at a scale that “people on the front lines cannot manage”.

A case of Ebola virus has been confirmed in Côte d’Ivoire for the first time since 1994, the country’s Ministry of Health has confirmed.