The World Health Organization and UNICEF have appealed for ‘humanitarian pauses’ in the grinding Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in August and September to facilitate a massive polio booster campaign – as three suspected polio cases were being investigated by a Jordanian laboratory. The appeal came as the entire region see-saws between the possibility […] Continue reading ->
Bavarian Nordic has no plans to sell or manufacture its vaccines directly to African countries, the company’s Vice President of Investor Relations told Health Policy Watch, saying that donations from rich countries will likely be the main source of supplies.   WHO’s announcement of a global mpox health emergency may have sent a wake-up call to […] Continue reading ->
The recent CARICOM summit of Caribbean leaders has endorsed a new Afro-Caribbean Health and Development  (HeDPAC) initiative aimed at stimulating South-South collaboration on resilient health systems, health worker capacity building, and local medicines and vaccines manufacture.  The formal CARICOM Communiqué at the close of the Summit in Grenada invited its 15 member states and five […] Continue reading ->
Updated: The World Health Organization confirmed Tuesday evening that it had evacuated 85 severely ill and wounded Gazans to the United Arab Emirates for advanced treatment via Israel’s Ramon airfield.  The complex operation occurred as tensions escalated in the region following the deaths of 12 children in a Golan Heights Druze community –  apparently from […] Continue reading ->
The Argentina-based biotech firm,  Sinergium Biotech, has agreed to share know-how on the production of an mRNA vaccine for Avian influenza (H5N1) with WHO’s  Tecnology Transfer Hub so that an affordable vaccine could rapidly be produced for developing countries, WHO said Monday. The agreement marks the first time that a vaccine developer has actually volunteered […] Continue reading ->
The outbreak of a new and dangerous strain of mpox in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has now spread to Goma, eastern DRC’s largest city with 25 cases reported, mostly in the city’s displaced persons camps, WHO officials confirmed on Thursday.  And with person-to-person transmission occurring, particularly within communities on the move after fleeing […] Continue reading ->