Some 8 million people living in remote areas in Liberia, Uganda and Kenya will get support to access lifesaving vaccines, as a result of a new partnership between Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Audacious Project, Last Mile Health and Living Goods. The aim is to use digital technology to boost the number of community health workers as well as to integrate immunization information and data-capture into their daily routines. Continue reading ->
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is oversees the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety of medicines in the European Union, will scale back activities through 2019 due to significant staff loss when it moves from London to Amsterdam in March 2019 as a result of Brexit. Some of the areas that could be affected include the agency's work at the international level on supply chain integrity, antimicrobial resistance, vaccines, and clinical data analysis. Continue reading ->
Or they should be. That’s the conclusion of a recent study published in the medical journal Vaccine. The study focused on political views of parents in the state of California, who had chosen not to vaccinate their nursery-school aged children. And it tracked the number of parents who had filed personal belief exemptions (PBEs), applications for permission to avoid vaccinations over a 5-year period to 2015. A disproportionate number of parents filing such forms were from Republican or conservative neighbourhoods, according to researcher Kevin A Estep, from the health administration and policy program at the university. Continue reading ->
Following the South African government's recent approval of a new intellectual property policy that includes elements aimed at preserving access to medical products that are increasing in popularity among developing countries, the research-based pharmaceutical industry had a few general comments. The message: the policy incorporates some of their concerns but is wrong on "evergreening" patents, and could harm industry, which is "the goose that lays the golden egg." Continue reading ->