Six months after publication of their landmark report, Make it the Last Pandemic, the co-chairs of Independent Panel have re-entered the political fray over the slow pace of urgently needed reforms to vaccine equity, pandemic finance and countries’ legal obligations – that they say are required to end the COVID-19 pandemic and head off the […] Continue reading ->
The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) on Friday gave its greenlight to the mass rollout of both Pfizer and Moderna COVID booster shots to all adults over the age of 18, from six months after a person’s second vaccine dose. J&J vaccine boosters would be authorized after just two months of the […] Continue reading ->
Some two-thirds of deaths of women from cervical cancer are happening in low- and middle-income countries that have not yet included human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines for girls and young women into their immunization regimes, said WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Gheybresus on Wednesday. He was speaking at a high level event that saw First […] Continue reading ->
While it pales in comparison to tobacco industry marketing, two new capital investment funds worth some $75 million to support low- and middle-income countries in their fight against tobacco are being created by signatories to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and a related Protocol on illegal sales. Together, the funds would yield an estimated […] Continue reading ->
As the Glasgow Climate Conference winds to a close, the final COP26 declaration appears destined to contain watered-down language on fossil fuel phase-out, and no clear way forward for the $100 billion in finance needed by low-income countries. Against that landscape, Médecins Sans Frontières Dr Maria Guevara talks about why health is the elephant in […] Continue reading ->
Moderna has fired back against claims made by US National Institutes of Health (NIH) that its scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) helped to invent the crucial component of the pharma company’s COVID-19 vaccine, stating that the mRNA sequence was “selected exclusively” by Moderna scientists. “We do not agree that […] Continue reading ->
Pakistan and eight other countries, mostly in or around conflict zones, face the largest gaps in vaccine commitments needed to reach a WHO goal of 70% coverage by September 2022. The data is part of a new “COVID Global Tracker” – launched Wednesday during a first-ever meeting of the world’s foreign ministers, convened by US […] Continue reading ->
Fifty countries have committed to building sustainable, low-carbon and climate-resilient healthcare systems, and 14 of these have set net-zero carbon emission target dates from as early as 2030. This emerged from a health and climate change session at COP26, the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, that was co-hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO). […] Continue reading ->
An international pandemic treaty based on equity could be the antidote to current weaknesses and imbalances in the global response to COVID-19, according to a group of influential authors in a Lancet paper published on Tuesday. A number of the authors are associated with The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response chaired by Helen […] Continue reading ->
Most countries’ drug policies are misaligned with governments’ obligations to promote health, human rights and development, according to the first-ever Global Drug Policy Index, which was launched on Monday. Drug policies that rely on criminalisation, police intervention and forced eradication have a detrimental effect on the health and human rights of the affected community instead of […] Continue reading ->