UN News Today 04 November 2026 |

Simple health reforms could save 1.6 million lives a year: WHO

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries to scale up six proven climate-resilience measures that it insists could save 1.6 million lives a year.

The appeal comes ahead of UN COP31 climate talks in Türkiye beginning next week. 

One of the agency’s key messages is that climate change is a health crisis, but much of the harm it causes can be prevented with affordable solutions that are already available.

An estimated 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change.

“We are asking the countries there to negotiate as if people’s lives depend on it, because they do,” said Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO’s Head of the Climate Change, Air Quality, Energy and Health Unit:

“The world is now entering an El Niño, which is forecast to be the strongest ever, bringing both floods and drought on top of even higher temperatures. And all of those will take lives. So, WHO and health workers around the world are looking to COP for strong commitments on mitigation, on adaptation   and on finance that will protect people from these escalating hazards.”

The six prevention measures that WHO wants to see implemented include early warning systems for heatwaves, water and sanitation services that are resilient to climate change and cleaner household fuels and technologies, for cooking and heating.

The agency is also calling for governments to ensure that fossil fuel prices reflect the damage that they cause to people’s health everywhere. 

This could save 1.2 million lives a year from reduced air pollution and have the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while generating $5.4 trillion in tax annually, on top of $3 trillion in overall economic welfare gains, annually.

“For every dollar invested, societies would receive $24 in benefits,” WHO said, stressing that the biggest gains would be in low and middle-income countries.

Myanmar: Children reported killed and injured in airstrikes 

Staying with the UN health agency whose Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has condemned the killing of a newborn baby in an attack on a maternity ward in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

According to reports, the baby was among five people killed in Sunday’s attack in Mrauk-U, Rakhine state, western Myanmar. The same hospital previously sustained a deadly strike in December 2025.

It comes after an airstrike on Saturday hit an educational centre in Loikaw Township, Kayah state, reportedly killing three children. The facility was sheltering displaced families also seeking safety amid the country’s ongoing civil war that was sparked by a coup in 2021.

Medical workers were also among the casualties in the latest incident which is the 62^nd verified attack on healthcare in Myanmar this year, according to WHO.

Insecurity and blocked communication have limited the UN health agency’s ability to verify attacks, meaning that the total number of incidents may be higher, Tedros noted.  

Sudan: intense drone strikes kill civilians, cut power and water

To Sudan, where an increasing number of drone strikes is targeting civilians and destroying vital public services, from power generators to water networks.

That’s the firm belief of the UN’s top aid official in the country, Denise Brown, who’s appealed for urgent international support to help all those impacted by the war between former allies-turned-rival militaries.

Speaking to UN News, she described “an intense pattern of drone strikes over the past couple of weeks”, with sources of energy and fuel systematically targeted and destroyed:

“Essential services, of course, are being massively disrupted. Colleagues from the World Health Organization were in a hospital yesterday just outside of Khartoum. The electricity went out because of these drone strikes. The hospital has no generator, no solar panel. So, the 25 people on dialysis which they need, that dialysis stopped, point blank.”

Ms. Brown explained that the strikes are widespread across Sudan and have hit markets and people in displaced sites. The violence has also caused widespread water and fuel shortages, with queues stretching for kilometres in Khartoum. 

The UN aid coordinator’s comments echo the serious concerns of UN human rights investigators into the Sudan conflict who warned last week that the war is gaining new ground, becoming more technologically sophisticated and increasingly deadly. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News