Africa’s brutal experiences battling Ebola and a range of other deadly diseases helped prepare health systems to deal with COVID-19. And by the time the SARS-CoV2 virus landed on the continent, its Centre for Disease Control (CDC) had already “established regional coordinating centres, increased lab capacity and unified surveillance networks”. The lessons in emergency response […] Continue reading ->
PUNE – Indian twitter for days has been a desperate space. There are appeals for oxygen cylinders, cries for funding to meet healthcare costs, and panic-stricken relatives scouting for hospital beds for their loved ones. Hospitals are now approaching the courts for help as they run out of oxygen. And even prominent lawyers and influencers […] Continue reading ->
Amid a huge global push for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive intellectual property (IP) rights on products related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry launched a document on Monday – World IP Day – asserting that a “strong IP system advances public health” . According to the 10-point […] Continue reading ->
Fifty countries have not yet resumed routine immunisations disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting 228 million people – mainly children – and there have already been serious measles outbreaks in Yemen, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to World Health Organization (WHO) director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyusus. To address this, the […] Continue reading ->
As the hotly contested proposal for an IP waiver on COVID-related health products comes up again for debate on Friday, 30 April at the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Council, legal expert Hyo Yoon Kang looks at the foundations of IP law to challenge “TRIPS waiver” naysayers. Geneva Health Files [GHF]: You have argued that IP […] Continue reading ->
India recorded the world’s highest daily toll of new infections for the second consecutive day on Friday, while Japan plans to impose its third state of emergency, just three months before the Tokyo Olympics are set to begin. India is currently facing its worst outbreak of SARS-CoV2 since the pandemic began, with over 330,000 new […] Continue reading ->
One of the few silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic is the unprecedented collaboration of every sector of society to overcome it – best demonstrated by the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-Accelerator), which celebrated its first anniversary on Friday. The ACT-Accelerator’s most famous pillar is the vaccine facility, COVAX, which has distributed almost 40 […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19 infections fell significantly – by 65% percent – after a first dose of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in a study of more than 373,000 British residents who received one of the two jabs. The first in a series of two new studies, published by the University of Oxford, found that the […] Continue reading ->
Progress towards global malaria targets has stalled in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has posed a serious threat to malaria responses worldwide, but a number of countries are nearing the goal of zero cases of malaria, said WHO, in a forum convened just ahead of World Malaria Day on 25 April. The forum Reaching Zero: […] Continue reading ->
Islamabad, Pakistan: Even as Pakistan faced an intense third wave of COVID-19, health authorities ‘silently’ suspended vaccination registration for its frontline Healthcare Workers (HCWs) for more than a month – ostensibly because of low registration and concerns about fake registrations. But following queries by Health Policy Watch on Monday, Ministry of Health officials suddenly did […] Continue reading ->