Following COP28, WHO will advance calls to phase out fossil fuels, step up commitments to decarbonize healthcare, and adopt a new resolution on climate and health to be presented to the World Health Assembly in May 2024. These were the key takeaways from the WHO's year-end global press briefing by WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom and other senior officials at the year-end press briefing before the Geneva press corps on Friday. Health and humanitarian crises linked to raging conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other conflict hotspots were also high on the agenda for the WHO, as well as other UN agencies, at a second press briefing on Friday morning, looking ahead to 2023. In addition, the WHO has warned that a more dangerous strain of mpox, the virus that swept the world in 2022 and 2023, is now being transmitted through sexual contact in central and west Africa, including among women working in the sex trade as well as men who have sex with men — and its spread also poses a potential global threat. Yet not a single dollar of donor funding has been raised to support increased diagnostics, treatment, vaccination or monitoring and surveillance in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries where the virus is most active and spreading the most, said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s health emergencies specialist.(Elaine Ruth Fletcher)