Time-bound waivers of intellectual property (IP) rights and benefits for countries that share information about threatening pathogens are some of the key components of the draft pandemic accord  sent to World Health Organization (WHO) member states by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on Monday. These two issues have been major bones of contention in negotiations and […] 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 ->
When governments invest in drug research and development (R&D) with pharmaceutical companies, they should ensure upfront that these drugs are affordable and widely available – and a global pandemic accord needs to provide high-level guidance on how to do this. This is the view of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a non-profit group […] Continue reading ->
Under the leadership of Dr Bernard Pécoul, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative became one of the flagship programmes for research and development into diseases affecting the world’s most forgotten people. He has contributed to the betterment of the lives of millions, yet few outside global health circles know his name. This is his story.  […] Continue reading ->
More stable funding for WHO, but only incremental progress on reforms in global pandemic response are expected out of the upcoming World Health Assembly, where member states also will debate and discuss over two dozen other critical health issues that don’t always make the headlines.   The 75th World Health Assembly, WHO’s annual meeting of member […] Continue reading ->
Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft, a senior scientist at the Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative (DNDi) has a vision that could be critical to halting the next pandemic – but is esoteric, difficult to organize and even more challenging to build the trust and buy-in needed to make it really work.  The vision is of a common clinical-trial […] Continue reading ->
Pfizer has so far refused an invitation from the Geneva-based Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) to cooperate on a study exploring whether the treatment window of its successful antiviral drug, Paxlovid, could be extended from 5-7 days using another drug compound in addition, Dr Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft, Director of DNDi’s COVID-19 Response, told Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
A global grassroots movement of scientists based on crowdsourcing ideas, expertise, and goodwill has already generated – and freely released – more than half of the known structural information on the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. Based on this, they are now on a quest for an open-source drug that can block the virus from replicating. […] Continue reading ->