Following majority approval by the European Parliament at the last plenary session in Strasbourg before the summer break, the final preparations for establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) are underway. The latest plans envisage the Commission’s Directorate General for Development being divided, with around half of its 300 staff being subsumed into the EEAS.

Heidi Hautala, the Finnish Green MEP who is chair of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on human rights, has publicly urged EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to be more outspoken in criticising countries that have poor records on human rights. Ms. Hautala said she believed that Baroness Ashton’s discreet approach was not appropriate for the EU’s stance towards human rights abuses in China, Russia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and undermined the bloc’s aspiration to project a strong voice on the world stage.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a global code of practice which aims to halt the damage done to developing country health systems by the emigration of vital healthcare workers. The Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel is intended to achieve “an equitable balance of the interests of health workers, source countries and destination countries”.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 5.2 million people worldwide are now receiving life saving treatment for HIV, compared to 4 million at the start of 2008. It is estimated that HIV-related mortality could be reduced by 20% between 2010 and 2015 if the WHO’s guidelines on early treatment are widely adopted.

Participants at a symposium on access to medicines in Geneva on 16 July, jointly hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), discussed the controversial issue of intellectual property rights and access to medicines. The enforcement of these rights has kept the prices of some medicines too high for the world’s poor, said participants.