Long months of pandemic lockdown have only exacerbated the harms due to alcohol experienced by billions of people worldwide. Now, WHO is in the process of developing a new alcohol action plan, in an effort to re-energize a stagnant process and overcome a “lost decade” of little progress on alcohol policies. Can it make a […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that is possible to get 70% of the world vaccinated against COVID-19 by June – but only if wealthy countries redirect their doses and orders to poorer countries that are lagging behind. Eleven billion vaccines are needed to reach the 70% target, said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus […] Continue reading ->
Discussions over a controversial World Trade Organization waiver on intellectual property related to COVID vaccines, treatments and other tools, have become more “constructive” said a senior WTO spokesman on Thursday, in a press briefing on the first day of the WTO’s two-day General Council meeting. There has been a “subtle shifting in the direction of […] Continue reading ->
Moderna should work through the Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) if it wants to invest in vaccine production on the continent, according to the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The company announced on Thursday that it plans to invest $500-million in a “state-of-the-art mRNA facility” in Africa that can produce […] Continue reading ->
Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Haiti were the only three member countries of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that failed to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) target of vaccinating 10% of their populations against COVID-19 by the end of September. Around 37% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated against […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has given the go-ahead for children to get the first-ever malaria vaccine in areas where there is a high to moderate risk of infection. The vaccine, known as RTS,S, is the first to have been approved against a parasitic disease. It has been tested on 800,000 children in Ghana, Kenya […] Continue reading ->
Africans are a step closer to speedier access to newer, safer medicines following this week’s notification by 15 African Union (AU) member countries that they have formally ratified and deposited their accord to create a new African Medicines Agency (AMA). Although the AU adopted the treaty to set up the AMA back in February 2019, […] Continue reading ->
Nineteen countries have been prioritised for support to implement new global targets aimed at preventing maternal and newborn deaths. This emerged at the launch on Tuesday of the new targets, which were developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and their partners in the Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM) initiative. UNFPA […] Continue reading ->
Two jabs of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are 90% effective against COVID-19 hospitalizations for all variants including Delta, for at least 6 months, confirmed a new study published by The Lancet. The study, conducted by Kaiser Permanete and Pfizer, found that while effectiveness against all SARS-CoV-2 infections declined over the study period, effectiveness against hospitalizations remains […] Continue reading ->
Indian generic drug manufacturers are poised to make the antiviral pill, molnupiravir, which halved hospitalisations in a trial of high-risk people with COVID-19. Merck, which developed molnupiravir in collaboration with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, has awarded non-exclusive, voluntary licensing agreements to eight generic companies in India since April in anticipation of positive trial results. According to Merck, […] Continue reading ->