Kenya initiated a national pilot of the world’s first malaria vaccine today, joining Ghana and Malawi to introduce the landmark vaccine as a tool against a disease that remains a leading killer of children under the age of 5 years, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The vaccine, known as RTS,S, will be rolled out nationally in […] Continue reading ->
At a first-ever Global Vaccination Summit, health leaders worldwide ramped up efforts to tackle “vaccine hesitancy”, which has prompted the recent resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. “After many years of progress, we are at a critical turning point. Measles is resurging, and 1 in 10 children continues to miss out on essential childhood […] Continue reading ->
Digital health holds the potential to transform health systems so that they become more proactive and responsive to patients, advocates said at Wednesday’s launch of a two-day international conference that brought together members of the global healthcare and artificial intelligence (AI) communities in Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry hub, Basel. But using AI doesn’t inherently empower women […] Continue reading ->
A new Lancet Commission report calls for health policy leaders to agree upon an ambitious global plan to eradicate of malaria by 2050 – contrasting with a World Health Organization report released in August that concluded it was too early to set a target date for eradication. The report Malaria eradication within a generation: ambitious, […] Continue reading ->
New data revealing that survivors of Guinea’s 2013-16 Ebola outbreak were five times more likely to die within the first year after recovery, as compared to the general population, suggests a need to revisit WHO guidance on Ebola survivors’ monitoring and care, a top WHO official said on Friday. The findings were part of a […] Continue reading ->
Facebook has begun rolling out a new algorithm that directs users searching for vaccine information to the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website, in the case of US-based searches, and for users elsewhere, the World Health Organization website, as a top search pick. The move was welcomed by WHO, officials at CDC, and […] Continue reading ->
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week approved a tuberculosis (TB) treatment regimen containing a new drug, pretomanid, offering a shorter, more effective course of treatment for highly drug-resistant strains of TB, the world’s leading cause of death by infectious disease. Pretomanid is only the third TB drug to be approved in over […] Continue reading ->
[TB Alliance] NEW YORK (August 14, 2019)—Pretomanid, a novel compound developed by the non-profit organization TB Alliance, was approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) today for treating some of the most drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB).1 The new drug was approved under the Limited Population Pathway for Antibacterial and Antifungal Drugs (LPAD pathway) […] Continue reading ->
Fifa Rahman, Unitaid NGO Delegation board member and PhD Candidate at the University of Leeds, moderated a panel at the recent IAS Conference on HIV Science in Mexico entitled “How To Fix Our Medical R&D Model: A Spotlight On TB Treatment.” The panel featured speakers from Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) Access Campaign, Drugs […] Continue reading ->
[US National Institutes of Health] 12 August, 2019 The Pamoja Tulinde Maisha (PALM [together save lives]) study is a randomized, controlled trial of four investigational agents (ZMapp, remdesivir, mAb114 and REGN-EB3) for the treatment of patients with Ebola virus disease. The study began on Nov. 20, 2018 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) […] Continue reading ->