The local manufacture of advanced pharmaceutical products has been a long-standing objective of health and industry policy in many developing countries, including in Latin America. This strategy has been applied to fight epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we still know little about the politics and governance that enable such arrangements, especially when there is no consent from the originator company. This study focuses on the case of Brazil, a country that is well-known for its health-industry policy, which includes the local production of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), a new treatment for hepatitis C. We seek to explain the factors that have contributed to Brazil’s successful production of generic versions of DAAs, and, later, to the decision by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to procure drugs from multinational pharmaceutical companies rather than from local laboratories.
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Right-wing African Members of Parliament (MPs), including some of the continent’s most vociferous anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, united with anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists for the first time at a conference in early May.
Aside from the expected rhetoric against abortion and LGBTQ people, the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty gave a platform to a speaker who claimed that a range of vaccines were unnecessary or designed to reduce African fertility – including the COVID-19, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), malaria and even tetanus vaccines.
Others agitated against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic agreement currently being negotiated, describing it as a “power grab” aimed at imposing abortion, same-sex marriage and lockdowns on the world.
The anti-vaxx charge was led by Kenyan doctor Wahome Ngare and South African Shabnam Mohamed, who describes herself as a lawyer and journalist.
Ngare is chairperson of the African Sovereignty Coalition and a director of the rightwing Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF).
Geneva, 21 May 2024:- Ahead of next week’s World Health Assembly (WHA 77, May 27-June 1), the Global Climate and Health Alliance is calling on World Health Organization (WHO) member states to adopt a proposed resolution on Climate Change and Health. The draft resolution clearly states that climate change is a major threat to global public health, and sets out a framework to promote health and build climate-resilient and sustainable health systems [1]. The key global health meeting takes place just ahead of next month’s UN Climate negotiations in Bonn (SB 60).
Date: Tue 21 May 2024
Source: Al-Omana [in Arabic, summ. & trans. Mod.MM, edited]
https://al-omana.net/news222272.html
The director of the Epidemiological Surveillance Department, Ministry of Health, Aden governorate, has revealed that they have registered 80 cases of cholera during 24 hours, which is the maximum number of cases within one day since this new outbreak of cholera started. He also mentioned that the number of registered cholera cases in the governorate has reached 1300 cases, with 9 deaths since the beginning of this year (2024), noting that the current available hospital capacities for the admitted cholera patients have been exceeded and are insufficient to meet the influx of cases.
Yemen has been hard hit by a prolonged and protracted outbreak of cholera over the past years. The combined efforts of health authorities and international partners have brought the disease to a halt for a while, but it seems to have reemerged again, especially in the southern governorates as mentioned above. - Mod.MM
Some of the most vocal global right-wing conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers are heading to Geneva at the end of this month (May) to agitate against the World Health Organization (WHO) and its pandemic agreement – including a Trump loyalist linked to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol.
An alliance of right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and alternative health practitioners calling itself “The Geneva Project” has planned a closed meeting on 31 May, while on 1 June it hosts a 150-minute invitation-only press conference and a public protest to coincide with the end of the World Health Assembly (WHA).
The protest outside the United Nations headquarters aims to “declare independence from global institutions such as the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum while celebrating cultural and individual sovereignty”, according to a press release from the group.
In a powerful, hard-hitting letter, Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa, also the African Union Champion on Pandemic Prevention Preparedness & Response, has laid down the most important priorities for the Africa Group in the negotiations for a new Pandemic Agreement currently underway at WHO in Geneva.
Geneva Health Files has learned that the letter, dated May 20th, 2024, was sent to key institutions and stakeholders on the African continent.
We publish the letter sent by the Presidency of South Africa on May 20, 2024, laying down the most important priorities for the continent.
This is what it says (also uploaded below):
The 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted a decision that marks a pivotal shift in the operational framework of the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce (WPEC) of the organisation. This Policy Brief examines how this Decision can enhance the trajectory of the e-commerce discourse within the WTO, elaborates on its implications and makes recommendations aimed at facilitating developing countries’ engagement in the WPEC.
Analysts studying the contracts South Africa concluded for the Pfizer vaccine and negotiations with Moderna for the Spikevax vaccine have found many instances of corporate bullying and draconian and one-sided contracts — but also of South African officials standing up and demanding more transparency, the Health Justice Institute said on Tuesday.
Global progress on improving maternal, newborn, and child survival has stalled. Many regions of the world continue to experience persistently high rates of maternal and child mortality, and despite improvements between 2000 and 2015, progress is now stagnating.
The combination of ongoing and new conflicts, climate change, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic create a perfect storm to drive back any gains that might have been made during the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) era.
The global community is off track from targets for reducing maternal mortality (SDG 3.1)
and ending preventable deaths of newborns and children younger than 5 years (SDG 3.2).
Globally, 287 000 women died from a maternal cause in 2020, averaging 223 deaths of mothers for each livebirth.
Health experts pin their hopes on long-awaited trials into a new potential vaccine for tuberculosis.
In the few minutes it takes to read this article, some 15 people are likely to have died from humanity’s worst infectious killer disease. Over the course of the day, the toll will be around 3,600.
The victims are likely to have died slowly, spending months or years coughing and wasting away as their lungs were relentlessly weakened.
Those victims are also all likely to have been poor and from the developing world, or middle income countries.
The killer is not an exotic new superbug, or recently-emerged virus, but one of the world’s oldest pandemics, caused by a bacterium which has plagued humanity for an estimated 40 millennia.
Locked in a constant arms race against human immune systems, the bug has in that time evolved into a stubborn, stealthy and difficult-to-stop killer.
Some 10.6m people fell ill with tuberculosis, or TB, in 2022 and 1.5m people died, which is an average of 2.5 deaths per minute.