The WHO-sponsored COVAX facility raised another US $2.4 billion on Wednesday from donors to fund more COVID vaccines for low- and middle-income countries – exceeding their total funding target and bringing the total pledged to the COVAX AMC to US $9.6 billion, following a GAVI COVAX AMC Summit “One World Protected” virtual event. But the […] Continue reading ->
Controlling a disease outbreak requires cooperation both behind borders and between countries, experts said at a Wednesday event co-organised by the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre.  And one key, neglected area of international cooperation has been travel restrictions, where countries worldwide have created a cacophony of different measures to control COVID.   “Travel measures are […] Continue reading ->
Governments and pharmaceutical companies alike must work together in combating the ‘virus of intellectual property (IP) monopolies over COVID-19 vaccines – which  further exacerbates inequality and lack of access to vaccines for vulnerable groups.  That was the uptake of a group of experts speaking at a webinar Wednesday on “The Virus of IP Monopoly Capitalism”’ […] Continue reading ->
Though more than 114 million people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in the Americas, the WHO Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has warned that the pandemic is far from over.  Last week, the region reported more than 1.2 million new COVID-19 cases and nearly 34,000 COVID related deaths – nearly 40% of all global deaths […] Continue reading ->
Limitations in COVID-19 testing capacity and surveillance—as well as uneven demand for testing—are likely masking the true severity of COVID-19 on the African continent, fueling the dangerous myth that much of Africa has been unscathed by COVID-19. Test positivity rates were above 10% across many African Union (AU) member states during the second wave—substantially higher […] Continue reading ->
World Trade Organization’s (WTO) director general Ngozi Onkonjo-Iweala on Thursday hailed the United States government’s decision to support the suspension of intellectual property rules on COVID-19 vaccines – while also emphasising the urgency of even more immediate actions to increase vaccine supplies to lower-income countries.   In a statement after a two-day closed-door WTO General […] Continue reading ->
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “silent pandemic” of drug resistance to mutated bacteria, viruses and parasites is gaining ground and requires major government investments in antibiotic research and development (R&D), a group of experts has warned. “People are dying across the world from drug-resistant infections. This is a problem of today, and […] Continue reading ->