The World Health Organization (WHO) has added the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine to its list of ‘prequalified’ vaccines, paving the way for bulk procurement and mass deployment of the new vaccine across malaria-endemic countries by UNICEF and other global health agencies. The prequalification of the world’s second malaria vaccine, developed by Oxford University and manufactured by […] Continue reading ->
The elimination of tuberculosis cannot be achieved if medicines are locked in a “patent panoply,” according to Indian author and journalist Vidya Kishnan. Speaking to Garry Aslanyan on the most recent episode of Dialogues, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast, the author of “Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History” said that “everything […] Continue reading ->
In a fragile show of unity, the World Health Organization Executive Board approved a draft resolution calling for “immediate, sustained and unimpeded” humanitarian relief to beleaguered Gaza, including safe passage of health personnel and supplies, as well as ambulances and patients.  The WHO EB move, which will clear the resolution for approval by the May World […] Continue reading ->
As donors withdraw from HIV, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has chosen to focus on the importance of community-led interventions to end the AIDS pandemic for World AIDS Day on 1 December. “There has been an unprecedented backsliding in financial commitments to community-led organisations, and it is costing lives,” according to UNAIDS […] Continue reading ->
LUSAKA, Zambia – Ensuring that Africa can manufacture its own vaccines will represent “the second independence of Africa”, Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said at the start of the Conference for Public Health in Africa 2023 (CPHIA) on Monday. “Many African countries got their […] Continue reading ->
Unusual outbreaks of respiratory illness and pneumonia in Chinese children have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to ask the country for detailed information.  Children’s hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning Province, some 800km apart, are “overwhelmed with sick children, and schools and classes were on the verge of suspension”,  according to local Chinese media, as […] Continue reading ->