A Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announcement Thursday that it has signed agreements with 35 companies to manufacture generic versions of Pfizer’s life-saving COVID-19 Paxlovid treatment for distribution in 95 low- and middle-income countries came fire almost immediately from medicines access groups as too little, too late.  The MPP-brokered sublicences follow on from an agreement between […] Continue reading ->
A four-year-old girl from Jerusalem has been diagnosed with polio, Israel’s Health Ministry said Sunday – the first case in the country since 1989. The source of the girl’s infection is vaccine-derived polio virus, according to Israel’s head of Public Services Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, speaking to reporters on Monday evening. “We are not talking about […] Continue reading ->
Women in Africa will feel the disruptive force of the pandemic for many years to come – with upticks in maternal deaths and prolonged disruptions in maternal, child and reproductive health services issues the continent must grapple with now.  About 40% of African countries are reporting continued disruptions to sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and […] Continue reading ->
The Republic of Korea will serve as the global biomanufacturing training hub for all low- and middle-income countries that want to produce biologicals, including vaccines, insulin, monoclonal antibodies and cancer treatment, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, five more countries will also receive support from the WHO-supported global mRNA tech transfer and […] Continue reading ->
Residents in the European Union will soon have access to a single electronic database with information about all medicine available in the region, following the European Medicines Regulatory Network’s adoption of a common standard for electronic product information (ePI).  “This will enable any EU resident to get up-to-date information on all medicines available to patients […] Continue reading ->
The German-based BioNTech, which co-developed with Pfizer an mRNA COVID vaccine, said on Wednesday that it will set up modular “turnkey” mRNA vaccine facilities to produce the vaccine in Rwanda and Senegal in 2022 – with a fill-and-finish collaboration in Ghana as well.  South Africa, which is the new hub for the WHO-supported mRNA vaccine […] Continue reading ->
The major players in the European and African pharmaceutical sectors have called on the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) to support the creation of a permanent “business platform” to foster the pharma industry’s development in Africa. This emerged at a workshop Monday hosted by the the European Commission’s Directorate General for Internal […] Continue reading ->
The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron is now the dominant COVID-19 variant in South Africa, the head of Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Thursday – raising questions about whether the continued global creep of the new SARS-CoV2 sub-variant could dash hopes of a much-needed COVID-19 reprieve. “We have data from South […] Continue reading ->