Geneva-based Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, today announced the start of a major two-week campaign to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people in Harare, Zimbabwe against typhoid, after an outbreak there. The campaign will be the first in Africa to use a new typhoid vaccine that can be administered to young children and is long-lasting. Nearly 2,000 cases of typhoid have been reported since a second wave of outbreak arose in September, Gavi said. Continue reading ->
Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the African Academy of Sciences have joined together in a new initiative to make clinical practice guidelines more efficient and adaptable for clinical trials that require less stringent approaches, such as those that take place during infectious disease outbreaks. Additionally, by applying a more flexible approach towards the application of these guidelines, the initiative also hopes to make them “future proof,” or able to better incorporate new technologies. Continue reading ->
In a rare occasion, the World Health Organization Executive Board today resorted to recorded voting to decide on a politically-charged question, as Israel requested the deletion of an agenda item for the next World Health Assembly relating to the health of Palestinians in occupied territories. The Board ultimately voted against removing the agenda item for the next WHA in May. Continue reading ->
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) today announced the launch of the "Pandemic Response Box", which offers researchers free access to 400 compounds that could lead to development of new treatments for pandemic diseases. In return, researchers "will be expected to share data resulting from research on the molecules from the box in the public domain within 2 years of its generation." Continue reading ->
Poliomyelitis, a highly infectious and sometimes debilitating viral disease, is about to be eradicated from the world. However, the last mile is the hardest, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week at a member state discussion on polio eradication. Beyond the direct eradication of wild polioviruses in the three last endemic countries, and the steady supply of affordable inactivated poliovirus vaccines, the WHO is being called on to help countries keep the virus at bay, and implement a strategy to use polio-related structures to strengthen their national health systems, as polio funding is dwindling. Continue reading ->