China administered the world’s first oral aerosol COVID-19 vaccine boosters in Shanghai on Wednesday, as new lockdown measures were imposed on Wuhan, the supposed birthplace of the pandemic. Chinese vaccine manufacturer CanSino Biologics said in a media statement that the inclusion of its vaccine in Shanghai’s booster vaccination program marked “the start of the rollout […] Continue reading ->
Most countries are failing dismally to promote physical exercise despite inactivity playing a major role in heart disease, obesity and diabetes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO’s newly released Global status report on physical activity 2022 measures the extent to which governments are implementing recommendations to increase physical activity across all ages […] Continue reading ->
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers’ Network (DCVMN) have thrown their weight behind the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) proposal to improve access to vaccines in future pandemics. The proposal, known as the Berlin Declaration, outlines how the pharmaceutical industry would reserve an allocation of real-time production of […] Continue reading ->
A precedent-setting agreement to permit an expensive cancer drug to be produced more affordably by generic manufacturers has been signed between the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) and pharmaceutical company Novartis, enabling much wider access to a medicine that treats a rare blood cancer. Nilotinib is a twice-daily oral medication used to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia […] Continue reading ->
Midway through last year, the head of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, Strive Masiyiwa, angrily accused the global COVID-19 vaccine acquisition platform, COVAX, of misleading African countries about its ability to procure vaccines for them. Masiyiwa’s bitter remarks came after months of Africans watching Europeans and North Americans being vaccinated against COVID-19 while no […] Continue reading ->
Measles outbreaks are escalating in large parts of the world thanks to “backsliding” in national immunisation programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunization warned on Tuesday. “There were 25 million children un- or under-vaccinated in 2021,” said Dr Kate O’Brien, WHO’s director of immunization, […] Continue reading ->
Sharp disagreements emerged about the role of intellectual property (IP) during a pandemic at a panel convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which is charged with developing a pandemic treaty. Komal Kalha, associate director of IP at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), insisted that the fast […] Continue reading ->