WHO and Africa CDC are trying to close a huge testing gap for monkeypox that has left some health workers reliant on symptomatic diagnosis. The World Health Organization (WHO) and African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) acknowledge they will not be able to gain a clear understanding of the monkeypox outbreak in […] Continue reading ->
In the face of growing malnutrition and related diseases of pneumonia, diarrhoea and measles, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that it is setting up a hub in Kenya to help fight the “major physical and mental health repercussions” of the food crisis in the Eastern Africa region. More than 80 million people, or […] Continue reading ->
The European Medicines Agency is considering the extension of the use of the smallpox vaccine Imvanex to include people at risk of Monkeypox disease, the agency said on Tuesday. Imvanex is a modified form of the vaccinia virus, which is related to smallpox and currently authorised in the European Union (EU) for the prevention of […] Continue reading ->
Pfizer and BioNTech have announced positive safety, tolerability and immunogenicity data for two Omicron-adapted COVID-19 mRNA candidate vaccines – but for an earlier strain of Omicron than those that are currently globally dominant. The two Omicron-adapted vaccine candidates were given to 1,234 participants aged 56 years and older as boosters, and “elicited substantially higher neutralizing […] Continue reading ->
Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has decided not to declare monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), it could change its mind if there is evidence of “significant spread” in the next 21 days. This was announced over the weekend following the meeting of the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency […] Continue reading ->
Children infected with COVID-19 maintained strong immunity against the virus for at least 18 months, according to a preprint study that was released on Wednesday. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was conducted by Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi (KSM), the research and innovation center of Maccabi Healthcare Services in Israel, and was released on the preprint server […] Continue reading ->
COVID-19 vaccines prevented almost 20 million deaths worldwide in the first year of the vaccine programme, according to a modelling study published in The Lancet on Friday. The first modelling study to quantify the global impact of COVID-19 vaccines estimates that 19.8 million out of a potential 31.4 million deaths were prevented in the first […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) has once more raised the red flag over the lack of new antibacterial treatments being developed to address the mounting threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In its annual ‘pipeline report’, which assesses those antibacterial drugs in preclinical and clinical development, WHO describes the pipeline as “stagnant” and “far from meeting […] Continue reading ->
The Kigali Summit has called for the renewal of commitments in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) through the adoption of the Kigali Declaration on NTDs. Sponsored by the government of Rwanda, the Kigali Declaration on NTD is the successor to the ground-breaking London Declaration of 2012, which was a pledge made by governments, […] Continue reading ->
A new $100 million initiative to identify and reach zero-dose children – those who have not received a single routine vaccine shot – has been launched today by Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance in partnership with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and World Vision (WV). The Zero-Dose Immunization Programme (ZIP) will be led by the International […] Continue reading ->