A new UN health agency report also shows that six out of 10 medicines trained outside the region in Europe in 2023, while the number is even higher for nurses.
In light of these findings – and the fact that many Western and Northern European countries become “heavily dependent” on these foreign workers – WHO calls for more fair and more sustainable health worker migration.
Health care holes at home
Who is Dr. Natasha Azzopardi Muscat said any migratory doctor or nurse leaves a “strain on families and on the national health systems they left behind.”
By 2030, Europe is expected to have a deficit of almost a million health workers, the UN agency said.
It noted that Romania has managed to reduce the number of doctors leaving the country in recent years from 1,500 to 461, mainly by offering better pay, education and working conditions.
‘Innovation Index’ shows Switzerland Top as China Makes Top 10
Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Republic Korea and Singapore are the world’s most innovative countries.
It is according to the UN Agency World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, whose Global Innovation Index 2025 shows that the United Kingdom, Finland, Holland, Denmark is also in the top 10 – along with China for the first time.
In other findings, WIPO said the growth of innovation investments is slower, “shying” future forecasts about intellectual real estate trends.
Middle income climbers
About 80 indicators are used for the UN report ranging from research and development costs, venture capital agreements, hi-tech exports and submissions of intellectual property.
The latest WIPO report shows that middle-income economies led by China, India (38.) and Türkiye (43)-have continued to climb the innovation ladder by transforming ideas into reality.
For the past five years, however, Saudi -Arabia (46.), Qatar (48.), Brazil (52.), Mauritius (53.), Bahrain (62.) and Jordan (65.) have made the fastest progress.
Report finds that Nigeria not protected women and girls
Nigeria has failed to do enough to prevent targeted attacks on schools, lack the criminalization of abduction and marital rape – and to protect schoolgirls from abduction and stigma, according to a new report by a key organ of independent UN experts monitoring discrimination against women.
The repeated failure “constitutes systematic and serious violations” of the rights of women and girls, said the chairman of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (Cedaw), Nahla Haidar, Wednesday.
The report was published on Wednesday after a mission to the country in December 2023, where committee members met with officials from various departments and agencies, armed forces and police representatives – and victims of abduction.
Chibok abduction
The mission originally received information about the mass abduction of 276 girls in the Chibok school by Boko Haram in 2014. Eyveog twenty-one escaped from 103 released in exchange for prisoners, while at least 91 are either still in captivity or their fate is unknown.
The CEDAW delegation was the first UN body to have visited the school since the abduction, according to school staff.
“The abduction of the Chibok girls was not an isolated tragedy, but part of a number of mass abductions targeting schools and communities,” said Ms. Haidar.
She added that “at least 1,400 students have been kidnapped from schools since the Chibok resort.”
Sunscreen Restored to Who Essential Medicine -list hailed as Lifeline for People with Albinism
Independent UN experts have greeted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision to restore sunscreen to its model lists of important drugs – those who meet the population’s priority health needs.
They described the move as “an important development in the long struggle to draw attention to and find practical, effective and sustainable means of the unnecessary deaths caused by skin cancer among people with albinism.”
Skin cancer is the leading cause of death for people with albinism around the world – a preventable tragedy, the experts emphasized, attached to poor attention, limited access to sunscreen and slow institutional and state reactions.
Lifeguard
They emphasized that WHO’s decision could “transform the everyday life of people with albinism, including expected life expectancy,” but warned that its influence will depend on the governments’ political will and commitment to integrating sunscreen into national health systems and supply chains.
“Providing and accessing sunscreen for people with albinism is not a cosmetic exercise. It’s a basic human right,” the experts said.
WHO’s decision is also in line with the international obligations of states to prevent clear human rights damage that arises from climate change and to protect those most disproportionately affected.
