10 January 2017: The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the successfully trial of a vaccine against Ebola, which provides “high protection” against the deadly virus. The Ebola crisis and other global health emergencies have highlighted the need to invest in more trained health workers, as a high-level commission projects a global shortfall of 18 million health workers.

Results of the Ebola vaccine trial, conducted by WHO, were published in The Lancet medical journal on 23 December 2016. The vaccine was tested on almost 6,000 people in Guinea in 2015, where fresh cases of infection were being reported. Among those vaccinated, no new Ebola cases were reported, whereas a control group reported 23 cases of infection. A three-year outbreak of Ebola in West Africa from 2013-2016 killed more than 11,300 victims.

The vaccine, which is made by the pharmaceutical company Merck, is available for emergency use through the WHO during the approval and licensing process. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) provided a US$5 million contribution to Merck for future procurement of the vaccine.

On 22 December, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon formally welcomed the report of the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, which he had established in March 2016. In the report of the Commission, titled ‘Working for Health and Growth: Investing in the Health Workforce,’ and issued on 20 September 2016, the Commission outlines recommendations and five immediate actions to advance the health and inequality-related aspects of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It highlights the issue of health worker mobility to high and middle-income countries, and calls for measures to mitigate the losses in poorer countries. The authors also note the growing employment opportunities for women in the health sector, and call for gender biases, violence and harassment of women health workers to be dealt with. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) collaborated with the WHO on the study.

The Ebola outbreak and the crisis in Syria illustrate “all too vividly” the importance for countries to protect, support and invest in the health and social workforce.

The Secretary-General noted that the Ebola outbreak and the crisis in Syria illustrate “all too vividly” the importance for countries to protect, support and invest in the health and social workforce. He encouraged all stakeholder to agree on a way forward to “ensure all countries can take bold action to build a sustainable global health workforce and align public and private investments to do so.”

Another WHO report, released on 10 January 2017, calls for raising taxes and prices on tobacco products in order to both raise revenue and discourage smoking. ‘The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control’ estimates that a tax of US$.80 (80 cents) on each pack of cigarettes would increase retail prices by around 42% and reduce smoking by 9%, thus saving governments, communities and families the healthcare costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. Such a tax would also raise an estimated US$140 billion a year in revenue globally.

The report, jointly published by the WHO and the US National Cancer Institute, highlights the economic and disease burden on developing countries, as 80% of all smokers live in middle- to low-income countries. The authors stress that tobacco control measures do not harm national economies, but rather will relieve the burden imposed by tobacco use. They call for further studies to consider the interrelationships between tobacco use and poverty, to better under the effects of tobacco on low-income populations. They also call for research to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the 2003 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. [WHO Press Release on Ebola Trial] [UN Secretary-General’s Remarks on Health Employment Commission] [Working for Health and Growth: Investing in the Health Workforce] [WHO Press Release on Tobacco Report] [The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control]