The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) recorded its first case of Ebola on Sunday in Butembo – a city that was one of the epicenters of the last Ebola outbreak – since its last outbreak ended in June 2020. A woman with Ebola-like symptoms was detected in Butembo, a city in North Kivu Province, […] Continue reading ->
Civil society organizations, pharmaceutical industries, and other stakeholders support the ratification of the AMA Treaty. On the two-year anniversary of the establishment of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) Treaty, over 40 patient and civil society organizations, health and pharmaceutical industries, and product development partnerships called upon African Union member states to ratify the Treaty. Rapidly […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – The South African police have arrested six people in the past two weeks for trying to smuggle large quantities of the anti-parasitic medicine, ivermectin, into the country from India as demand for the drug as a treatment for COVID-19 surges internationally. Ivermectin is only registered to treat parasitic infections in animals in […] Continue reading ->
COVAX aims to start shipping nearly 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to the continent this month – in what will be Africa’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign, said WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti at a press briefing Thursday. COVAX has notified countries in Africa of the estimated dose allocation for the first phase of […] Continue reading ->
IBADAN, NIGERIA — A new fixed-dose combination (FDC) tuberculosis (TB) treatment could improve the ease of treatment regimes, increase the availability of treatments, and get the world back on track to achieve the goal of ending TB. The short-course preventative treatment, consisting of two drugs – rifapentine and isoniazid – will reduce the pill burden […] Continue reading ->
KAMPALA, UGANDA – Responding to a swell of global criticism, a senior Ugandan health official told Health Policy Watch that Uganda’s government is not paying unreasonably higher prices for it’s AstraZeneca vaccines, in comparison to other African countries – or Europe. “You cannot compare prices directly between countries because there are many factors to consider. […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – Despite battling against a more infectious variant, South Africa seems to have ridden out its second and deadliest wave of COVID-19 infections. And with new case counts declining, the government relaxed its most recent set of lockdown restrictions on Tuesday – reopening beaches, and easing night-time curfews and a ban on alcohol […] Continue reading ->
AstraZeneca has agreed to increase its COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union by 30% after a week of feuding over a shortfall in vaccine deliveries, announced by the pharma company after its manufacturing plants hit a number of snags. By April or June, a series of manufacturing foul-ups reported by Pfizer as well as […] Continue reading ->
“A strange virus is circulating in Wuhan, China,” said my grad school intern, Grace Ren, just back from a visit to her mother in Shanghai in early January, 2020. Somewhere in between the brief respite of New Year’s and a hurried fondue alongside frigid Lake Leman in early February during WHO’s first and last in-person […] Continue reading ->
Member countries will have an idea of how many COVID vaccine doses they will receive via the World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility and when they will arrive within the next day, WHO special advisor Dr Bruce Alyward has said. These “indicative allocations” would depend on when the WHO’s regulatory review of the specific vaccines that […] Continue reading ->