As we approach the final months of member-state negotiations over a World Health Organization Pandemic Accord, due to come before the World Health Assembly in May, the efforts to forge a consensus have witnessed modest progress. However, the original divide between developed and developing countries on key issues such as finance, access and benefit sharing, […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19 vaccines reduced deaths due to the pandemic by at least 57%, saving more than 1.4 million lives in the WHO European Region between December 2020 and March 2023, according to a report published in medRxiv, a pre-print platform for health sciences, on Tuesday. Most of the lives saved were those of people aged 60 […] Continue reading ->
CAIRO, Egypt -Some 70% of countries globally have weak national medicines regulatory systems. But the launch of the African Medicines Agency should help address many of the shortcomings on the African continent, said speakers at the 6th Scientific Conference on Medicines Regulation in Africa (SCoMRA), convened here in mid-December. The conference, organized by the African Union […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has added the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine to its list of ‘prequalified’ vaccines, paving the way for bulk procurement and mass deployment of the new vaccine across malaria-endemic countries by UNICEF and other global health agencies. The prequalification of the world’s second malaria vaccine, developed by Oxford University and manufactured by […] Continue reading ->
The elimination of tuberculosis cannot be achieved if medicines are locked in a “patent panoply,” according to Indian author and journalist Vidya Kishnan. Speaking to Garry Aslanyan on the most recent episode of Dialogues, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast, the author of “Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History” said that “everything […] Continue reading ->
One-third of people in 14 countries in the Western Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia used antibiotics without a medical prescription, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European Region. The survey involved 8221 participants, half of whom reported taking oral antibiotics in the past 12 months. Participants came […] Continue reading ->
Measles cases and deaths have skyrocketed worldwide, with 37 countries experiencing large or disruptive outbreaks in 2022 compared to 22 in 2021, according to a joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, published on Wednesday, highlights the devastating impact of declining vaccination […] Continue reading ->
The drug regulatory authorities of Switzerland, the Republic of Korea and Singapore have become the first three countries to be listed as WHO-Listed Authorities (WLA) that can be used as a point of reference for other countries’ deliberations on approval of new drugs and vaccines. The WHO’s recently established WLA framework is intended to create […] Continue reading ->
The world may soon have a new antibiotic to treat gonorrhoea after a successful phase 3 trial of an oral pill, zoliflodacin, that was led and sponsored by a non-profit organisation. The results were announced late Wednesday by the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), which conducted the trial in collaboration with Innoviva Specialty […] Continue reading ->
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country has introduced the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into its routine immunization system, aiming to reach 7.7 million girls – in the continent’s largest-ever vaccination drive against the virus that causes nearly all cases of cervical cancer. Girls aged 9–14 years will receive a single dose of the vaccine, which is […] Continue reading ->