Image by Novartis AG via FlickrI was gonna say, "What's it got to do with being poor?", but then again, I'm thankful that even the poor gets their share of proper treatment, at the very least...
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Posted: 18 November 2011
PARIS: A major campaigner in vaccines for poorer countries announced plans on Thursday for innoculating up to two million women and girls against cervical cancer by 2015.
GAVI, a Geneva-based public-private partnership set up in 2000, said the initiative was approved at a board meeting in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka.
The scheme depends on price negotiations with manufacturers and assurances from governments that they can distribute the vaccines effectively, it said in a press release.
Nine countries are candidates for the vaccine, although their names are being withheld at this stage, said a spokesman for GAVI, reached by phone from Paris.
The cost of the project cannot be disclosed immediately because of the sensitive nature of the price talks, he added.
The vaccine shields against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes some 275,000 deaths each year from cervical cancer, 88 per cent of them in developing countries.
HPV vaccines have been available in rich countries since 2007. It can take 10 or 15 years for advanced vaccines to be rolled out in poorer settings.
"The HPV vaccine is critical to women and girls in poorer countries because they usually do not have access to screening to prevent cervical cancer and treatment taken for granted in richer nations," said GAVI's chief executive, Seth Berkley.
The GAVI board also agreed to seek funds for vaccines against German measles, also called rubella, a childhood disease which is highly dangerous for pregnant women, leading to miscarriage, stillbirth and birth defects.
-AFP/ck
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Cervical vaccines for poorer countries
This is now some news from the Asia Pacific region...
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Posted: 16 February 2011
DHAKA: Bangladesh will on Thursday launch the world's largest trial of a cheap oral cholera vaccine, which could save tens of thousands of lives every year it if proves successful, health officials said.
The World Health Organization estimates that up to five million people worldwide contract cholera each year, with 120,000 of them dying as a result.
And while oral vaccines have long been available, they are considered too expensive to employ on a wide scale, according to health authorities.
The study involves 240,000 people from Mirpur, one of Dhaka's poorest suburbs, two thirds of whom will receive two doses of the cheap Indian-made vaccine.
The remaining 80,000 people will not receive the vaccine. Both the control group and those who are given the liquid vaccine will be monitored over the next four years.
The study will determine whether the drug is rolled out in a state-backed mass vaccination, with the results likely to spark interest from other poor countries such as Haiti, where a recent cholera epidemic has killed over 4,000.
"It's the biggest cholera vaccination study in the world," said Nasmeen Ahmed of the International Center for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR'B), which is running the scheme with the government.
"A successful outcome could prompt governments in countries where cholera has been a big health problem to go for a mass vaccination drive," she said.
"It is a critical study to know how a government can vaccinate millions of people against cholera."
The ICDDR'B was set up in the 1960, when cholera was still one of the leading causes of death in Bangladesh.
Nasmeen said the institute was carrying out the study in Mirpur because almost a quarter of cholera patients who come to the ICDDR'B clinic every year are from the impoverished area.
Poor sanitation, lack of clean water and vast slums in Mirpur make it vulnerable to cholera outbreaks.
-AFP/ac
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Bangladesh to hold massive cholera vaccine trial
Another one of those 'accidents', and the damage is done, irreversible, irreparable…
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DHAKA - The Bangladeshi authorities yesterday said that they had found traces of a toxic chemical in paracetamol syrup believed to have killed two dozen children in the past six weeks.
Health Minister AFM Ruhul Haq said investigators had found diethyl glycol in the locally-produced syrup.
"We conducted two tests on the paracetamol syrup and each time we found diethyl glycol. It's a toxic chemical used in the textile and leather dyeing industries. It damages your kidneys if you consume it," the minister said.
Mr Haq said that, instead of mixing the paracetamol with propylene glycol, which is used as a solvent in paracetamol syrup, the drug-maker added the toxic chemical because it is 10 times cheaper.
The 24 children who died were aged between one and five and came from Comilla, where the drug company concerned has been shut down.
Police are hunting for the company's owners and pharmacists. AFP
From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 29-Jul-2009
