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 ->
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Director-Genera, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has “warmly welcomed” the breakthrough reached this week over a waiver on intellectual property for the production of COVID-19 vaccines. “This is a major step forward and this compromise is the result of many long and difficult hours of negotiations. But we are not there yet. […] Continue reading ->
Health workers, patients and civilians have been held hostage at the Mariupol regional intensive care hospital in Ukraine by Russian troops since Monday morning, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR). Russian soldiers are using the hospital as a base to attack Ukrainian forces, and using the hostages as “human shields” according to […] Continue reading ->
The first session of the newly constituted Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to draft a “pandemic preparedness instrument” for the World Health Organization (WHO) began on Monday. The six-member body, representing all WHO regions, is made up of Precious Matsoso (South Africa), Roland Driece (the Netherlands), Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes (Brazil), Ahmed Salama Soliman (Egypt), […] Continue reading ->
With fewer than 1% of its 90 million citizens vaccinated against COVID-19, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has resorted to training teams of “rumour-busters” to tackle misinformation about the virus in order to encourage more people to get the vaccine. David Olela, communications lead for the DRC health ministry’s vaccination programme,  admits that his […] Continue reading ->
The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines do not harm in vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates, according to a recent study, countering disinformation that vaccines could negatively affect fertility. In contrast, the SARS-CoV2 virus has been found to negatively affect the quality of embryos for couples who are undergoing IVF treatments and sperm. The peer-reviewed study, published in […] Continue reading ->