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An international coalition aiming to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic needs $28 billion, a bargain price for stopping the damage done by a virus that has run rampant for the past year, a senior UN World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Tuesday.

“This is the best deal in town. No question. This will pay itself off within 36 hours, once we get international travel and trade mobility moving again”, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to the WHO Director General and lead for the coalition, known as ACT Accelerator.

Countries must redesign their development pathways to reduce damage to the environment and the natural world, or risk stalling progress for humanity overall, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has warned in a major new report. 

A new ground-breaking global youth initiative was launched on Monday to invest in and scale up youth-led solutions and engagement, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Although many of the world’s most important crops and livestock species originate in mountain regions, hunger is rising in these areas due to biodiversity loss and climate change, according to a joint study published on Friday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and partners. 

It found that between 2000 and 2017, the number of mountain people vulnerable to food insecurity in developing countries grew from 243 million to almost 350 million. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for global solidarity and greater international cooperation, and must be turned into an opportunity for fundamental change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a keynote address to the Nobel Peace Prize Forum on Friday. 

The event was held the day after the UN World Food Programme (WFP) officially received the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its lifesaving work assisting millions of hungry people across the globe. 

Addressing the financing gap to provide COVID-19 vaccines for everyone, everywhere, is an urgent priority, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday, in an appeal for stepped-up funding to support poorer countries. 

This week the United Kingdom began rollout of a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech, and more nations are expected to follow suit very soon. 

Lack of basic water and sanitation services at health facilities has put about 1.8 billion health workers and patients at higher risk of COVID-19 and other diseases, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have said. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed just how important it is for all countries to have strong health systems that provide the entire population with quality services when and where they need them, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stressed.

The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, slams the levels of financial support for children allocated by high-income countries during the pandemic as totally inadequate, in a child poverty report issued on Friday.

Non-communicable diseases account for 7 of the world’s top 10 causes of death, a sharp increase from two decades ago, and heart disease remains the leading cause of death globally, a new UN World Health Organization (WHO) study has found.