Saturday, September 27, 2025
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The United States donates 1.5 mil doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Ethiopia 

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The Embassy of the United States in Ethiopia donated 1,552,590 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, which the U.S is sharing with Ethiopia through COVAX. The U.S. is sharing these doses safely, equitably, with no political strings attached, and with the singular objective of saving lives.
This new donation brings the total number of COVID-19 vaccines provided to Ethiopia by the U.S. to around four million doses since July 2021. The Pfizer doses arrived at the Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency on October 27th, via COVAX. It is the largest donation of vaccine doses from a single country to Ethiopia, to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are honored to announce this additional donation of life-saving COVID-19 vaccine to the Ethiopian people.  With this donation, the United States has shared around four million doses with Ethiopia so far. Our aim is to save lives and reduce suffering. As Ethiopia’s closest partner in public health, we continue to stand with you against this devastating pandemic,” said Ambassador Geeta Pasi.

 

 

Radisson becomes world’s first to offer carbon negative meetings

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Radisson Hotel Group announced that it became the world’s first hotel group to make all meetings and events across 400+ hotels in its EMEA portfolio carbon negative. For every event taking place at its participating hotels, Radisson Hotel Group will offset double the carbon footprint, to ensure that every meeting has a positive impact on the environment.
For meetings booked between 18 October 2021 and 31 January 2022 and taking place before 31st March 2022, Carbon Negative. Planet Positive will set a new sustainability standard in the global hospitality industry. The program allows clients to host meetings in a sustainable way by offsetting double the CO2 emissions from meetings and events free of charge to the client, making meetings that take place during this period at participating hotels carbon negative.
Carbon Negative. Planet Positive reinforces the Group’s 100% Carbon Neutral meetings offering, in place across the Group’s 1,600 hotels worldwide since 2019. The initiative forms part of the Group’s wider Responsible Business program which targets reducing the Group’s carbon footprint by 30%, and which aims to set science-based targets. Since the launch of the 100% Carbon Neutral Meetings program, the Group has offset over 30,300 tons of CO2 at no cost to its clients, which is the equivalent to removing more than 6,500 fuel driven cars off the road.

Delivering an integrated digital health ecosystem to Africa

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Remote Doctors 4 Africa, a start-up focused on the digital healthcare ecosystem, is launching a new telehealth app to address the lack of healthcare services in rural communities. Through the Remote Doctors 4 Africa app (RD4A), citizens in the remote corners of South Africa, Botswana, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe, will have access to digital telehealth services, and healthcare professionals will have access to critical data.
COVID-19, and its subsequential onslaught to communities across the continent, highlighted the dire situation, not only in South Africa but across Africa, where rural communities lack access to education, healthcare, and infrastructure. It is these forgotten citizens that Remote Doctors 4 Africa want to assist through a range of telemedicine, telehealth, and connectivity solutions.

The Tobacco Industry Used the COVID-19 pandemic to build influence with governments in 80 Countries

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A new report from tobacco industry watchdog STOP reveals that the tobacco industry embraced the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to gain influence, meddle in life-saving health policies and secure preferential treatment. Reports from civil society organizations in 80 countries, analyzed in the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2021, show that no country was immune to the industry’s efforts to use lobbying and donations, often connected to pandemic response, to its advantage.
“The tobacco industry’s behavior during COVID-19 wasn’t just business as usual—this research suggests it’s been far worse in terms of scale and impact,” said Mary Assunta, PhD, Head of Global Research and Advocacy for the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, a partner in STOP and lead author of the Index. “In the middle of a pandemic, health should be the primary consideration in all policy decisions, but it was often sidelined in favor of the industry’s commercial interests. Where policy isn’t well protected, more lives will be lost to tobacco and post-COVID economic recovery may be impacted, with higher health costs and potentially less tax revenue to fund recovery.”