Older adults vaccinated with Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine were 15% less likely to be infected with COVID-19 than those vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech’s, according to a peer-reviewed study, published in JAMA Network on Wednesday. The study was based on observational data from 6.3 million adults, almost 60% women and 86.5% White, with an average age of 76 […] Continue reading ->
High cost has prevented some cancer drugs from being included in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) updated Essential Medicines List (EML) and Essential Medicines for List Children (EMLc) released on Wednesday. These include “patented, highly-priced” treatments for lung and breast cancer. “With the cancer medicines, we are facing now an issue where we have a […] Continue reading ->
With the fate and nature of the pandemic accord currently being negotiated by World Health Organization (WHO) member states still uncertain, global health experts are calling for “realistic” backup plans to protect the world against the next pandemic. “We need an ambitious but implementable pandemic accord – that is the Holy Grail,” Javier Guzman, Director […] Continue reading ->
The licensing agreement reached between Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and the Stop TB Partnership on Thursday to allow the generic production of the tuberculosis drug, bedaquiline, is simply a “stop-gap” measure that applies to a limited number of countries, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). At least nine countries in the Eastern Europe and Central […] Continue reading ->
African leaders must take the lead in the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases, invest in their control and elimination, and foster cross-border collaboration to achieve the goal of eliminating NTDs as public health concerns by 2030. Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) continue to pose a significant threat to the health and well-being of millions of people […] Continue reading ->
Despite the giant strides the world has made in combating the HIV epidemic, the high rate of infections among women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as childhood HIV infections, continue to hamper progress.   “Four thousand adolescent girls and young women acquired HIV every single week. That’s a crisis every single week. 3,100 of […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organiztion (WHO) has been far too slow in providing financial, psychological and legal assistance to victims of sexual assault and exploitation committed by its staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the 2018-2020 Ebola response, a veteran international investigator said at a WHO press conference on Friday. Hervé Gogo, presenting […] Continue reading ->