Three medicines currently being used to treat malaria, cancer and immune deficiencies are being tested on hospitalised patients with COVID-19 to see whether they can be repurposed to address the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday. “These therapies – artesunate, imatinib and infliximab – were selected by an independent expert panel for […] Continue reading ->
More than a year after the start of the global coronavirus pandemic, and the release of openDemocracy’s investigation into childbirth during COVID-19, we know that there have been too many violations of women’s pregnancy and childbirth rights during this crisis, including outright suspensions of services. Too often, the response of governments and health facilities to […] Continue reading ->
Gulshana Bano does not remember her exact age when she got married – probably aged 16 or 17, she recalls. Now 27 years old and 10 years into her marriage, a frail and petite Bano has four children aged between the ages of four and nine with gaps of less than two years between each […] Continue reading ->
Much more global attention needs to be paid to developing early therapeutics to protect patients with COVID-19 from “hospitalisation, intensive care, or worse”, according to a report from Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) released on Thursday. In addition, the few innovative treatments that exist are mostly available in high-income countries, and DNDi warns that […] Continue reading ->
Eleven African countries will this weekend start receiving their portion of the first batch of 400 million COVID-19 vaccines from Johnson and Johnson (J&J), the Africa CDC announced on Thursday. Recipients include Togo, Lesotho, Ghana, Tunisia, Angola, Cameroon, Egypt, Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Mauritius, and they are part of pool purchasing facilitated by the African […] Continue reading ->
#COVIDReporting: For the past 18 months, Health Policy Watch global reporters have covered the COVID-19 pandemic. But they have not been immune from its impacts on their personal lives – and the virus has wreaked havoc with their lives. Over the next few weeks, we will bring you their stories. NEW YORK – I turned 24 […] Continue reading ->
More than 700 healthcare workers and patients have died, and more than 2000 have been injured in attacks on health facilities across 17 emergency-affected countries and fragile settings since December 2017, according to a new WHO report released on Tuesday. Countries at risk included Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, Mozambique, Nigeria, occupied Palestinian territory, Myanmar and the […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September to enable a minimum of 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated. Making the appeal at the WHO’s COVID-19 media briefing on Wednesday, Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Gheybreysus said support for […] Continue reading ->
IBADAN – On Sunday 1 August, two planes carrying four million doses of the Moderna vaccine from the US touched down in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city. With the arrival of the new doses, Nigeria will be able to resume its COVID-19 vaccination programme which was suspended on 22 July when the Nigeria Primary Healthcare Development […] Continue reading ->
This article is the third in a three-part series on COVID-19 booster vaccines, which is an evolving discussion as more evidence emerges about the performance of vaccines against variants. Alongside the heated policy debate over the disproportionate consumption of COVID vaccines in rich countries, a handful of senior scientists are pushing back against the scientific […] Continue reading ->