A tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate that has shown modest efficacy rates received a $550 million boost from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Wellcome Trust, which announced on Tuesday that they will cover its Phase 3 clinical trials. The candidate vaccine, M72, showed modest 54% efficacy in preventing the development of symptomatic TB […] Continue reading ->
SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT – Ken Henshaw’s story of his Niger Delta community’s experience with fossil fuel extraction reads like the fallout from a war zone without the ready presence of international media to document the devastation. Henshaw lives at ground zero of one of Africa’s earliest and longest-running experiences with oil extraction, a six […] Continue reading ->
From increasing disease surveillance and developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine to ‘eco-health’ and public trust, participants in the COVID-19 Global Research and Innovation Forum considered ways to globally prepare for future pandemics and end the current one. The third such forum, hosted by the World Health Organization, brought together over 100 research scientists, experts, policy makers, […] 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 ->
A new COVID-19 Oxygen Emergency Taskforce has been created in response to the dearth of sustainable oxygen supplies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) – and its critical importance for treatment of COVID-19. Co-created by Unitaid and Wellcome Trust in partnership with the WHO and a range of other global public health agencies, the taskforce, […] Continue reading ->
In early January 2020, as our Health Policy Watch team returned to work just after the New Year’s break, our production editor who had returned from a visit to her mother in China, called me to say in a mildly worried tone: “Hi Elaine, there is a strange virus circulating in Wuhan. I thought you […] Continue reading ->
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Sixty different local authorities in England have reported around 1,000 infections caused by a new COVID-19 variant. The variant is not thought to have an impact on disease severity or mortality, or on the efficacy of a vaccine. It has been reported to WHO. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in Parliament today: “We have identified […] Continue reading ->
Nearly 100 World Trade Organization member countries and entities could potentially swing behind a proposal by India and South Africa to enact a wide-ranging waiver of complex World Trade Organization requirements on the use of patented products, trade secrets and copyrights on health products during the pandemic, asserted the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access […] Continue reading ->
The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the need to dramatically step up the combat against drug-resistant bacteria, viruses and other pathogens. The world can’t afford to be caught again by surprise with the spread of a dangerous infectious disease for which there is no cure, a growing chorus of global health leaders are warning as the […] Continue reading ->
New modes of interagency collaboration triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic should be used as a model to advance more progress, post-pandemic, on important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health, said a group of top international agency leaders in Tuesday’s closing session of the World Health Summit. The three-day summit, which featured 310 speakers at […] Continue reading ->