Adhanom Research Articles

A stylistic analysis of the language of crisis (Covid-19): A transitivity and modality-based study

Speech, simply, is a kind of communication used to convey a speaker's intentions and ideas. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and interpret transitivity and modality as well as their use in Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' Speeches on COVID-19. The data consists of transcripts of two speeches presented at the COVID-19 media briefings on March 11, 2020, and April 1, 2021, which are published on the (World Health Organization website) (www.who.int). The transcripts are reviewed and examined in terms of Halliday's (1994) 'Transitivity theory, as well as Lock's (1996) 'Modality theory'. The findings show that the speeches employed rational, material, mental, behavioral, and linguistic transitivity processes, as well as obligation, potentiality, ability, inclination, usuality, and probability modality. The usage of transitivity and modality, with reference to the context of speeches, reveals different interpretations of meaning. Furthermore, this study contributes and adds efficient methods and good practices to health socialization throughout the pandemic, which has a significant impact on the public's understanding of how to correctly handle COVID-19.

Transitioning to more sustainable food systems that support health and wellbeing

Food is central to our health and well-being, yet many aspects of our food systems have become unhealthy and unsustainable. Our food systems today contribute significantly to, and are being destabilised by, the environmental crises we are facing. An increase in the consumption of low-quality diets is the leading cause of death and a major contributor to the burden of non-communicable diseases in Europe. Dietary guidelines issued by governments do not align at all with what is being produced, consumed, and exported. Food systems have also contributed to creating, entrenching and widening health inequalities across Europe, as subgroups of the population have little access to and ability to choose healthy and sustainable food. In addition, the benefits of current food production and consumption systems go to large transnational companies rather than small companies and primary producers; the average EU farmer for example earns 50% of the average worker in the economy. Major external shocks such as COVID-19 and the Russian war against Ukraine have reflected the vulnerability of our current systems of food production and redistribution, as experienced through growing levels of food inflation, food insecurity and hunger in Europe, and even more so in other parts of the world. Ambitious intersectoral and systemic approaches are needed to address current contradictions in our food systems, and to make them more sustainable and resilient. Public health professionals need to step up their action to highlight the impacts of unhealthy food consumption, advocating and engaging in political debates. Promising policies at the EU level, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy, Sustainable Food Law, and on Food Security, set out planned measures to make food systems more environmentally friendly, fair and healthy. Ensuring that such policies are actually implemented, and that environmental, health and social considerations are valued in equal measure as economic ones, remains however a major challenge. This plenary session will focus on what measures are urgently needed and must be prioritised to ensure more sustainable food systems and to improve health and well- being across Europe. The plenary will also discuss the challenges, and the role of health professionals in helping to achieve this critical shift. Moderators: Suzanne Costello, CEO, Institute of Public Health, Ireland Caroline Costongs, Director EuroHealthNet Video address: Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General Keynote speaker: Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy, City University of London, UK Panellists: Francesco Branca, Director of the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, WHO Gunhild A. Stordalen, Founder and Executive Chair EAT Foundation, Norway Holly Cairns, TD for Cork South-West and Leader of the Social Democrats and party spokesperson on Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Rural Development; Social Justice; and Disability, Ireland Anant Jani, University of Heidelberg, Germany and Fellow Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, UK

Transitivity and Modality Analysis of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s Speeches on Handling COVID-19

Speech is one of the communication media that can be used to convey certain ideas and intentions of the speaker. The current study aims to analyze the use of transitivity and modality in Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s speeches on handling COVID-19 and interpret their meanings. Data comprises the transcripts of two speeches delivered at the media briefing on COVID-19 on 11 March 2020 and 1 April 2021 available on the World Health Organization website (www.who.int). The transcripts were then examined and evaluated using Halliday’s (1994) transitivity theory and Halliday's (1994) and Lock’s (1996) modality theories. The results reveal that the speeches made use of material, relational, mental, behavioral, verbal, and existential processes of transitivity, as well as potentiality/ability, obligation, usuality, inclination, and probability of modality. Depending on the contexts of speech, the use of transitivity and modality indicates certain interpretations of meaning. Moreover, this study contributes best practices to health socialization during the pandemic and gives a great impact on the public’s better understanding of how to properly handle COVID-19.

Improving health equity through data collection

On April 20, 2023, WHO launched the Health Inequality Data Repository (HIDR) consisting of almost 11 million data points spanning over 2000 indicators and as such, is the world's biggest collection of disaggregated data on the determinants of health. “The ability to direct services to those who need them the most is vital to advancing health equity and improving lives”, stated WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in comments to the media. “Designed as a one-stop-shop for data on health inequality, the repository will help us move beyond only counting births and deaths, to disaggregating health data according to sex, age, education, region and more”, stated Dr Tedros.

The silent epidemic of substandard and falsified medicines in low- and middle-income countries: heed lessons from the tragic deaths of children in Indonesia

The silent epidemic of substandard and falsified medicines in low- and middle-income countries: heed lessons from the tragic deaths of children in Indonesia

Aiming for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic: the what, how, who, where, and when.

Aiming for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic: the what, how, who, where, and when.

A TransSE-ResNet Deep Learning Model with Multi-Head Attention Mechanism for Covid-19 Chest CT Image Classification

Covid-19 has been spread worldwide for nearly three years and affected the economy and our daily life deeply. Even though Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency. In the coming period, human beings will continue living with and fighting against it for a long time. How to distinguish between Covid-19 and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) patients will become a basic clinical task. Apart from the RT-PCR test, CT is also a complementary tool to detect whether infected by Covid-19. In this paper, a TransSE-ResNet model with the multi-head attention mechanism is proposed for Covid-19 chest CT image classification. The input images can be classified into three categories, Covid-19 patients, CAP patients, and healthy individuals. From the results of the experiments, the proposed model obtains an accuracy of 96.76%, outperforming the related models in the experiment. It is qualified to work as a part of the Covid-19 infection detection system we are developing.

Consciousness of evidence-based medicine in public health emergencies.

Consciousness of evidence-based medicine in public health emergencies.

The time to act is now: a call to action on planetary health and sustainable surgical systems

In September, 2022, global surgery champions gathered on the sidelines of the 77th UN General Assembly in New York (NY, USA), reissuing the call to action for sustainable surgical systems. The impact of climate change on surgical systems requires urgent attention, as noted by WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus: “We live in a time of multiple, overlapping, and related crises; and many of the victims of this crisis need surgical care. As usual, the poor and marginalised suffer the most, both from the impacts of climate change and the lack of access to quality surgical care.”

ICOPA 2022: living with parasites, collaborating globally, and breaking a glass ceiling

ICOPA 2022: living with parasites, collaborating globally, and breaking a glass ceiling

Will the Qatar World Cup be good for health?

Kicking off on Nov 20, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar has been hailed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, as “a unique opportunity to show how sport can promote health”. WHO, the Qatar Ministry of Public Health, FIFA, and the organising committee hope to create a “Legacy for Sport and Health”, aiming to protect the health of all those involved, promote healthy lifestyles, and promote health at future mass gatherings. But will this World Cup really be good for health?

End of the pandemic is in sight, says WHO. What does that mean for Canada?

The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, according to World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” said Tedros in his most optimistic assessment of the global crisis to date.

HPV vaccines: when one plus one equals three

In May, 2018, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO, called for a global initiative for cervical cancer prevention and control. 2 years later, the World Health Assembly endorsed a strategic plan based on three pillars: prophylactic HPV vaccination; screening for HPV-associated precancer with appropriate follow-up; and timely, effective treatment for women found to have invasive cancer, including symptom management and palliative care.1 The strategic plan also included specific goals for member states to aim to meet by 2030 (90% of eligible girls vaccinated, 70% of women screened with an effective screen at least once in their lifetime, 90% of women found to have precancer or cancer receiving timely and effective treatment, and a 30% reduction in deaths from cervical cancer).

Towards Reviewing an Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on the Integrative World Economy

On 31 December 2019, WHO received inputs of pneumonia cases in Wuhan city of China, but the cause of infection could not be known initially. However, after some time, the medical researchers of China disclosed a novel coronavirus as the cause on 7 January 2020, named “2019-nCoV.” The coronavirus (CoV) belongs to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) species that leads to infection, causing illness, which ranges from the common cold to serious sickness. Finally, on 11 March 2020, the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the outbreak as a pandemic. As the fear and ambiguity rose among companies and firms, the profit rate seemed to be lower due to the COVID-19 global impact. Nearly US$6 trillion in wealth from 24th to 28 February 2020 of the stock market has been wiped out. There was a great decrease in value over the S&P index, which abolished over $5 trillion in the same week. However, the largest 10 companies of S&P faced a loss of $1.4 trillion. The investors make an analytical prediction that firms' profits may drop in response to the impact of coronavirus. The prime focus is on the importance of digital business practices and how different sectors have been affected in terms of economic loss during this pandemic outbreak in this paper.

The COVID-19 crisis, Herd Immunity, and “Vaccine Apartheid” in the Age of Anthropocene

AbstractThe coronavirus pandemic has led to millions of deaths around the world. In many countries, it has also exposed long-standing inequities and injustices in health care, income distribution, labour market practice, and social protection for the poor, women, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized segments of the population. The disproportionate casualties among vulnerable populations have also exposed predatory corporate practices, such as the refusal to share vaccine patents with low-income countries (LIC) in the Global South. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that this “vaccine apartheid” could lead to the further spread of more dangerous forms of virus variants, and that global solidarity and collaboration may be the only viable approach to current and future pandemics.1 Scientists have long warned that the continued destruction of the environment and ecological diversity would lead to future waves of cross-species (zoonotic) viral pandemics, due to the elimination of “natural borders” that once existed between human and non-human species. In the last several decades alone, humanity has suffered from five major zoonotic pandemics: AIDS, SARS, MARS, Ebola, and COVID-19.2 This Special Issue focuses on a select group of Asian countries in order to critically examine the impact of socio-legal inequities in state-centric policies upon domestic populations, including indigenous peoples, and to explore the possibility of international collaborative strategies for controlling the spread of deadly viruses and their variants in the coming years and decades, in Asia and beyond.

Health Apartheid during covid-19: A Decolonial Critique of Racial Politics between Taiwan and the who

Abstract While racism has spread rapidly as the covid-19 pandemic disrupted global health systems, this study focuses on the case of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first African Director-General of the who, and his allegations of racism against Taiwan, which has been excluded from the who for decades. This study theorises ‘health apartheid’ as a conceptual framework to critically analyse three forces—global racial politics, imperial logics of global health, and state-centrism of international institutions—that relate to Taiwan’s exclusion in various ways. We argue that Tedros’s allegation was instrumentalised to overshadow the systemic, structural, and institutional racism reproduced by the who during the competition between Chinese and American hegemonies. This study shows that the pandemic exacerbates health apartheid against unrecognised nations, like Taiwan, when global solidarity is desperately needed. We call for a systematic transformation of the who to resist racist state-centrism and pursue a people-centred approach to global health governance.

Monkeypox as a PHEIC: implications for global health governance

Monkeypox was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on July 23, 2022. This is the seventh declaration of a PHEIC since 2005. The PHEIC is governed by the International Health Regulations (IHR). A PHEIC should be declared if a disease outbreak is an extraordinary event; when it constitutes a public health risk to other states through international spread; and when a coordinated international response is potentially required.

Towards Reviewing an Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on the Integrative World Economy

The coronavirus (CoV) belongs to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) species that lead to infection, causing illness, starting from common cold to some serious sickness. Finally, on 11 March 2020, the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the outbreak as a pandemic. As the fear and ambiguity rose among companies and firms, the profit rate seemed to be lower due to the Covid-19 global impact, say nearly US$6 trillion in wealth from 24th to 28 February 2020 of the stock market has been wiped out. There was a great decrease in value over the S&P index, which abolished over $5 trillion in the same week. However, the largest ten companies of S&P faced a loss of $1.4 trillion. The investors make an analytical prediction that firms' profits may drop in response to the impact of coronavirus. Our prime focus is on the importance of digital business practices and how different sectors have been affected in terms of economic loss during this pandemic outbreak in this paper.

The Role of Health Worker in Performing Medical Services during Post Pandemic

Though have seems to reach the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still looming problems on the horizon. There are necessary adjustments needed with an end goal of supporting the ongoing COVID-19 response while at the same time strengthening our resilience and capacity to respond to public health emergencies in the future.The safety of health care workers (HCW) is an utmost priority and needs to be sustained; WHO has continuously called on governments and health care leaders to address the persistent threats to the health and safety of health workers and patients since the beginning of the pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded all of us of the vital role health workers play to relieve suffering and save lives,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “No country, hospital or clinic can keep its patients safe unless it keeps its health workers safe and ensuring that health workers have the safe working conditions, the training, the pay and the respect they deserve."1The pandemic has also highlighted the extent to which protecting health workers is key to ensuring a functioning health system and society. There are five critical mandatory actions to better protect health workers. These include protecting health workers from violence, improving their mental health, protecting them from physical and biological hazards, advancing national health worker safety programmes, and connecting health worker safety policies to existing patient safety policies.COVID-19 has exposed health workers and their families to unprecedented levels of risk. Although not representative, data from many countries across WHO regions indicate that COVID-19 infections among health workers are far greater than those in the general population. While health workers represent less than 3% of the population in most countries and less than 2% in nearly all low- and middle-income countries, around 14% of COVID-19 cases reported to WHO are among health workers. In some countries, the proportion can be as high as 35%. However, data availability and quality are limited, and it is impossible to establish whether health workers were infected in the workplace or their community.2 Regardless, thousands of health workers infected with COVID-19 have lost their lives worldwide.In addition to physical risks, the pandemic has placed extraordinary levels of psychological stress on health workers, who are exposed to highly demanding settings for long hours, constantly fearing disease exposure while separated from family and facing social stigmatization. Before COVID-19 hit, medical professionals were already at higher risk of suicide in all parts of the world. A recent review of health care professionals found that one in four reported depression and anxiety, and one in three suffered insomnia during COVID-19. WHO recently highlighted an alarming rise in reports of verbal harassment, discrimination and physical violence among health workers in the wake of COVID-19.3At the same time, it should be noted that the role and responsibilities of HCW are still the same before, during, and after the pandemic. Responsibilities of Health Care Workers involve a range of efforts relating to the diagnosis, response, and treatment of COVID-19 and supporting solutions to bring an end to this crisis, especially in maintaining the ongoing vaccination campaign.4,5 As the frontline in this fight against the pandemic, it is wise to involve HCW and their opinions in developing new treatments, vaccines and accurate diagnostic tests, streamlining processes where needed and appropriate, without compromising the scientific validity and reliability of proper research conduct. The involvement of HCW in the aforementioned process would ensure that treatments for patients would be realistic and practical in an actual clinical setting. It would be helpful to involve HCW in assuring adequate supplies of essential medical equipment such as ventilators. HCW has a vital role in this area because of the ability to identify and track patients who take illegitimate or black-market drugs. With widespread fear, anxiety, and panic surrounding the pandemic, there are countless snake oil salesman and quacksalver promising quick remedies to COVID-19 (and, without a doubt, any other subsequent pandemic in the future), which might pose more danger rather than benefits to the patients. HCW has the power to inform patients about dangerous products and unscrupulous marketers who may be selling products with false or misleading claims.There should be no rest to avoid further misfortune in this pandemic. Challenges are still ahead, but we must move forward and proceed to a new normal.

Towards Reviewing an Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on the integrative world economy- An Evolving perspective

The coronavirus (CoV) belongs to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) species that lead to infection, causing illness, starting from common cold to some serious sickness. Finally, on 11 March 2020, the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the outbreak as a pandemic. As the fear and ambiguity rose among companies and firms, the profit rate seemed to be lower due to the Covid-19 global impact, say nearly US$6 trillion in wealth from 24th to 28 February 2020 of the stock market has been wiped out. There was a great decrease in value over the S&P index, which abolished over $5 trillion in the same week. However, the largest ten companies of S&P faced a loss of $1.4 trillion. The investors make an analytical prediction that firms' profits may drop in response to the impact of coronavirus. Our prime focus is on the importance of digital business practices and how different sectors have been affected in terms of economic loss during this pandemic outbreak in this paper.