Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

An aid delivery in Gaza descended into chaos on Saturday with shots fired and a Red Crescent paramedic reporting five dead, as almost six months of Israeli bombardment has left hundreds of thousands in desperate need.

Children in northern Gaza are succumbing to hunger, according to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. WHO's recent visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals revealed distressing conditions, with 10 children having died from malnutrition.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has sought to allay public concerns over Disease X, a theoretical virus believed to be 20 times deadlier than COVID-19, stating that it's not a real thing.

"A presumed disease. Disease X, as the [World Health Organization] WHO calls it. It has no equivalent in real life," Koca said on social media platform X on Jan. 24, attempting to calm fears.

The head of the World Health Organization voiced fears Monday that countries will fail to strike a pandemic preparedness agreement by May, saying "future generations may not forgive us".

Israel bombarded southern Gaza on Friday after it publicly sparred with its main ally the United States over the possibility of a Palestinian state, the creation of which Washington sees as the only pathway to a lasting peace.

Cape Verde has become the third African nation to be declared malaria free, even as the disease continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people on the continent, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The Atlantic archipelago of about 500,000 inhabitants follows Mauritius in 1973 and Algeria in 2019.

DAVOS - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is on a list of around thirty political leaders from around the world who will attend the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos.

The forum will be attended by more than 300 participants, including Pristina's PM Albin Kurti, whose name is asterisked and footnoted.

World Health Organization staff visited Monday a Gaza hospital receiving casualties from deadly strikes on a refugee camp, hearing distressing stories of entire families killed and seeing dying children.

The Hamas-run health ministry said at least 70 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the "toll is likely to rise" as many families were thought to be in the area at the time of the strike.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday demanded aid be rushed to Gaza "at scale" as the head of the World Health Organization warned of a looming famine in the besieged Palestinian territory.

As Israeli bombs rained down on targets across Gaza, members of the U.N.'s top peacemaking council demanded "immediate, safe and unhindered" deliveries of life-saving aid.