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Humanitarian Situation in Haiti. Bulletin 2 Health Cluster. April
Health Cluster Situation Report. Humanitarian Situation in Haiti. April - June 2026. During the second quarter of 2026, ten major incidents involving armed violence led to the displacement of 50,867 people, a 19% increase compared to the previous quarter. After several months of severe deterioration in the Artibonite and Centre departments, the West department once again became the epicenter of new displacements, accounting for 64% of all movements recorded during the period—primarily due to armed violence in the commune of Cité Soleil. A decline in suspected diphtheria cases has been observed starting from the 21st epidemiological week. A total of 42 suspected cases have been reported across 15 sites for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the West Department (Cité Soleil, Delmas, Pétion-Ville, Port-au-Prince) since January 2026. The cholera outbreak has been steadily declining since its resurgence in October 2022. Following a peak of 3,683 suspected weekly cases in 2023, transmission dropped by nearly 80% in 2024. This downward trend continued into 2025 (with 85 cumulative cases recorded during the same period) and into 2026, with 44 suspected cases reported as of July 18 (a 48% decrease). Transmission levels currently remain low and stable, reflecting successful control efforts. Maintaining surveillance and response capabilities remains crucial to preventing a resurgence, given the active circulation of Vibrio and the persistence of risk factors for transmission.
Scientists identify avian cholera as major cause of penguin deaths in Antarctica
Thousands of Adélie penguins found dead in Antarctica in 2024 were primarily victims of avian cholera, not high pathogenicity avian influenza (H5N1) as researchers initially suspected, according to a ...
Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine: Tracking Outbreaks Amid Conflict
War recovery plans should include detailed monitoring to prevent diseases like polio and cholera from spreading
Yemen health system at 'breaking point': WHO
The escalating fighting in Yemen is pushing the country's health system to "breaking point", the World Health Organization said Tuesday, warning that diseases like cholera were already circulating widely.
Advancing high-threat pathogen preparedness in WHO South-East Asia Region: 2025 in review
Effective preparedness for high-threat pathogens demands more than technical tools — it requires a coherent strategy, sustained country engagement, and the institutional infrastructure to translate evidence into action. In 2025, the Pandemic and Epidemic Management (PEM) Unit advanced all three, working across the full spectrum of high threat pathogen (HTP) preparedness: from methodology development and evidence generation to country-level technical support, emergency response, and regional workforce strengthening.At the core of the PEM unit's work is building the regional evidence and policy architecture needed to prioritize and respond to HTPs systematically. A major milestone was the development of the HTP Prioritization Methodology — a structured, multi-criteria approach to ranking pathogens by epidemic potential, severity, and national context — and its national pilot in Bangladesh, where SARS-CoV-2, Nipah, dengue, and cholera emerged as the highest-priority threats, informing the PEM unit's contribution to 2026–27 biennium prioritization and workplan development (Access link here).Underpinning this work, the PEM unit advanced the peer-reviewed evidence base for HTP preparedness in the South-East Asia Region (SEAR), with three publications in international journals in 2025: Development of a zoonotic influenza distribution assessment and ranking system (ZIDAR): Technical application in Nepal to support cross-sectoral risk-based surveillance in One Health; Implications for influenza A virus surveillance in Southeast Asian Region countries: a scoping review of approaches for the surveillance of swine influenza viruses at human-swine interfaces in BMJ Public Health; and Operationalizing multisector partnerships: a Theory of Action and Reflection tool for zoonotic influenzas in Health Policy and Planning. Together, these contributions move the Region’s HTP preparedness agenda from practice to science — generating the transferable methodological foundations that will inform evidence-based capacity strengthening in Member States.Country-level engagement in 2025 reflected the breadth of contexts in which HTP preparedness must function. Technical support was provided for Mpox and cholera events across the Region, including coordination of cholera and acute watery diarrhea prevention and control in Myanmar in the wake of the March 2025 earthquake. In Myanmar, the PEM unit contributed technical leadership to the earthquake emergency response — one of the most complex humanitarian emergencies in the SEAR — as Health Operations and Technical Support lead within the Incident Management Support Team. This included strengthening emergency response planning, supporting operational and after-action reviews, and providing monitoring and evaluation support for both acute and protracted crisis response. The breadth of HTP support provided to emergency operations across the SEAR was documented in the PEM unit’s contribution to the regional report for the Health Security Interface Technical Advisory Group.In Sri Lanka, technical collaboration with the WHO Country Office and the Ministry of Health laid the groundwork for the National Steering Committee's 2026 annual meeting, development of Standard Operating Procedures for specialized emergency response, and a national training programme — all structured around evidence-based risk assessment for specialized hazards including HTPs.Across the SEAR, the unit contributed to strengthening the workforce architecture that underpins HTP response. Technical inputs shaped the WHO South-East Asia Regional Health Emergency Workforce Strategy 2025–2030, and the PEM unit supported conceptual development of the health emergency workforce framework for the Pandemic Fund Round 3 proposal.Alongside this, the unit's sustained engagement on the meningitis agenda culminated in the launch of the Regional Implementation Framework to Defeat Meningitis in South-East Asia by 2030 at the Seventy-eighth Session of the Regional Committee, ensuring the Region's priorities were reflected in the Global Technical Task Force and expanding the unit's HTP engagement beyond outbreak-prone zoonotic pathogens (Regional Implementation Framework to Defeat Meningitis in South-East Asia by 2030).Taken together, 2025 demonstrated that meaningful HTP preparedness is built incrementally — through methodology, engagement, and the steady accumulation of institutional capacity across Member States.Bangladesh piloted the HTP Prioritization Methodology and identified the highest-priority pathogens in the country context (Photo credit: WHO Country Office, Bangladesh).
WHO announces restart of preventive cholera vaccinations after nearly 4-year halt
The World Health Organization has announced the restart of preventive cholera vaccination programs globally after they were halted for nearly four years due to a vaccine shortage
Evaluation of WHO’s coordination in health emergencies helps guide humanitarian reforms
The recent evaluation of the Global Health Cluster sheds new light on how WHO, in its unique role as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Cluster Lead Agency (CLA) for health, coordinates life-saving health responses in humanitarian crises. It highlights how WHO works through partnerships to reach the most vulnerable crisis-affected populations and strengthen collective action in increasingly complex emergencies. Serving both learning and accountability purposes, the evaluation provided timely and actionable recommendations that are helping to strategically position WHO during the ongoing IASC Humanitarian Reset and the broader UN 2.0 reforms, where prioritization and new ways of working are taking shape. The evaluation was conducted between 2024 and 2025, at a time when humanitarian action funding was plummeting by more than 50%, triggering the launch of the IASC Humanitarian Reset. While restructuring and prioritization across the humanitarian landscape were underway, the evaluation, through iterative feedback loops, shared emerging findings that helped identify the most crucial coordination functions needed. This was especially important at a time when humanitarian needs and health risks due to armed conflict and natural hazards were increasing, while the capacity of health partners to support Member States to equitably reach all populations affected by crises and deliver response was at risk. The evaluation found that the Global Health Cluster (GHC) remains a highly relevant mechanism for strengthening health coordination in crises and has delivered efficiently despite limited resources. It noted strong collaboration with partners and highlighted opportunities to deepen integration within WHO structures and further enhance inter-cluster cooperation. The evaluation also identified areas where greater emphasis on transition planning, national coordination capacity and linkages between humanitarian response and health system strengthening would bring added value. While the GHC has achieved many of its strategic objectives, improvements in monitoring systems would help better demonstrate collective impact. The recommendations will help strengthen the IASC CLA coordination function across WHO, at all levels, and with all partners. It is noted that going forward WHO needs to continue to support capacity to fulfil coordination functions, in line with the IASC Humanitarian Reset whilst ensuring collective prioritization of health cluster action and quality coverage of the health response. The evaluation will help WHO strengthen locally-led action, national ownership and leadership of the sector, and linkages between health system strengthening activities. Additionally, the evaluation evidence will be used to optimize resource mobilization for the GHC and strengthen WHO’s capacity to deliver, plan for and monitor and evaluate results across the Organization. Read the evaluation Global Health Cluster https://healthcluster.who.int/ WHO’s work in health emergencies https://www.who.int/emergencies/overview