A safe, proven vaccine for COVID-19 doesn’t yet exist. But the battle for access is heating up. Even as the world struggles to come up with a viable COVID-19 vaccine as well as new treatments, the debate over how to ensure that people around the world can get access to whatever products are available, now […] Continue reading ->
As the World Health Organization convened its Executive Board of 33 select member states last week for the first time since May, the United States appeared to be fully back inside the WHO boardroom – despite the fact that President Donald Trump had announced in July that he would leave the global health organisation due […] Continue reading ->
Billions of dollars in vaccine investments are needed to beat back Covid-19. But on the bright side, Europe is playing a more active global health leadership role. Geneva’s ‘dean’ of global health speaks to Geneva Solutions ahead of Wednesday’s opening of the European Health Forum (Gastein), which brings together key policymakers and experts from across […] Continue reading ->
Germany and France are proposing sweeping reforms to strengthen the World Health Organization and ramp up funding for the agency. A draft paper circulated by the two countries outlines ten key reforms to boost the WHO’s legal authority and funding, while also increasing oversight of the agency’s emergency operations, according to Reuters, which obtained a […] Continue reading ->
United Kingdom Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock’s announcement to replace Public Health England (PHE) with a new agency focused on biosecurity and infectious disease threats has drawn widespread criticism from health experts. The Health Secretary announced that PHE will be replaced with a new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) in a speech […] Continue reading ->
A World Health Organization spokesperson on Friday said that the Organization is not well-positioned to make specific recommendations about when, where, and how travelers should be tested or quarantined for COVID-19 as countries reopen aviation, deferring the policy question to national governments. “Some of it is really dependent on what your national authorities ask of […] Continue reading ->
European legislation on drugs for rare diseases is “far from perfect”, but it is not a ‘failure’ given the amount of private sector investment it has attracted in the past two decades, says Yann Le Cam, CEO of EURORDIS – Rare Diseases Europe, a non-profit alliance of some 930 rare disease patient organisations across 72 […] Continue reading ->
Amidst the battle against a new infectious threat, the fight against tuberculosis, one of humankind’s oldest recorded infectious diseases, is also progressing. Pretomanid – only the second TB drug to hit the market in over two decades – received conditional marketing approval Monday from the European Commission as part of a new, three-drug treatment regimen […] Continue reading ->
The racing sport Formula 1 (F1) has made more than US $4.4 billion in advertising and sponsorship from tobacco companies in the past seven decades, according to a report published by F1 industry monitor Formula Money and global tobacco industry watchdog STOP. The first-ever analysis of its kind, Driving Addiction: F1 and Tobacco Advertising, was published just […] Continue reading ->
Big pharma has reaped billions in profit off the back of European orphan drug regulations that are supposed to incentivize R&D for rare diseases, according to an analysis of 120 orphan medicines registered in the EU over the past two decades. Instead of incentivizing R&D for rare maladies, the EU’s orphan drug legislation has turned […] Continue reading ->