Raising taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary beverage products by more than 50 percent could prevent more than 50 million premature deaths due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) over the next 50 years, while yielding over US$ 20 trillion in revenue. That is the conclusion of a report by a global task force headed by philanthropist Michael Bloomberg and economist Lawrence Summers.Continue reading ->

[Medicines for Malaria Venture Press Release]

The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) has granted new funding of €10m over five years to support late-stage clinical trials of a next-generation antimalarial combination including KAF156 (ganaplacide). The trials will be conducted in four countries in West and Central Africa: Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali and Niger.Continue reading ->

Image Credits: Anna Wang/MMV.

WHO said that it will launch a public online consultation involving governments, industry and civil society to try to come up with a broad consensus on what actually constitutes a “fair price” for essential medicines.

This critical next step was announced Saturday in a WHO press release following the close of the 2nd Fair Pricing Forum in Johannesburg, co-hosted by WHO and the Government of South Africa.Continue reading ->

Image Credits: WHO.

[CDDEP Press Release]

In a new report, CDDEP researchers identify key barriers that prevent access to antibiotics in LMICs and provides potential solutions to address them.

Antibiotic resistance is an emerging global public health threat spurred by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics. While “overuse” of antibiotics is widely accepted as a major health challenge, it is less well known that many people in low- and middle-income countries continue to die because they lack access to antibiotics. The majority of the world’s annual 5.7 million antibiotic-treatable deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries where the mortality burden from treatable bacterial infections far exceeds the estimated annual 700,000 deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections.Continue reading ->

Image Credits: CDDEP.

[GARDP Press Release]

[Geneva/San Francisco/Brisbane/Saarbrücken – 11 April 2019] 

  • Multi-actor partnership tests natural products and compound libraries for antibacterial activity
  • Discovery efforts will focus on World Health Organization’s (WHO) priority pathogens 

The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) is partnering with Calibr, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), in particular its location Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), and the University of Queensland’s (UQ) Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD) in its efforts to develop and ensure new antibiotics are globally available to all patients who need them. The agreement allows GARDP to access and test Calibr’s ReFRAME compound library and HIPS natural products library. Both libraries will be screened by CO-ADD to discover novel compounds or combinations of drugs that will kill the priority pathogens identified by the World Health Organization in critical need for research and development of new antibiotics.1Continue reading ->

Image Credits: GARDP.

Drummers, dancers, and speakers blasting Lady Gaga for a crowd of five hundred people linking hands and doing the wave is not the image typically conjured up when one hears of a World Health Organization event. A crowd gathered beneath a small stage decorated with slogans championing universal health coverage. Despite the morning’s chill lingering in the air, high spirits were contagious. This was the scene outside the United Nations headquarters in Geneva on Friday 5 April, where activists and health officials gathered to celebrate ahead of World Health Day 2019.Continue reading ->

Image Credits: WHO/P. Albouy.