Global Health Progress

One in 25 deaths across the world are linked to alcohol consumption, Canadian experts have suggested.

Writing in the Lancet, the team from the University of Toronto added that the level of disease linked to drinking affects poorest people the most.

Nearly three months after unveiling its potential blockbuster cardiac drug – Polycap, Ahmedabad-based Rs 800-crore Cadila Pharmaceuticals
will soon come out with yet another promising drug that can bring down the cost for TB treatment by 33%. The drug would hit the market over the next two weeks and promises to slash public healthcare costs significantly.

“The new drug, called Resorine, has been developed as a bio-enhancer that reduces the dosage of the existing drug administered to the tuberculosis patients, yet maintains the efficacy,” Cadila chairman IA Modi told ET.

Rip the top off a small sachet, the size of a hand, and inside is a delicious, creamy peanut goo that you suck from the packet.

It is messy and delicious.

And it has already saved the lives of countless children on the brink of death from starvation around the world.

Concerned over the changing intellectual property (IP) environment, where medicines are getting patented across the world, UNITAID had proposed a “patent pool” to make drugs more accessible.

And close to a year after getting the green signal to create the patent pool, UNITAID representatives met Indian generic drug-makers and researchers, among other stakeholders, to take on board concerns that need to be addressed when an ‘implementable plan’ is put in place later this year, Ms Ellen ’t Hoen, UNITAID’s Senior Advisor IP and Medicines, told Business Line.

The recent 36th annual Global Health Council meeting in Washington, DC hosted 2500 participants from over 100 countries, who converged to talk about technology’s role in reshaping global health. The agenda was packed with a variety of innovations and technologies: diagnostic tests, vaccines, anti-shock garments for pregnancy, mHealth (mobile phones for health), vouchers for health services, and even turntables for global health.

Two critical themes emerged from this conference: both context and measured impact matter.

Thinking about designing, developing and implementing technologies around measured impact raises a key question: How do innovative technologies fill existing gaps and extend the health system? This is especially critical given the explosion in global health over the past decade of funding, high-tech professionals, technology-based solutions, and social ventures and start-ups.

A US company that was awarded a 35-million-dollar contract to develop an influenza vaccine using insect cell technology has produced a first batch against (A)H1N1 flu, company boss Dan Adams said.

“We turned out our first batch of doses — about 100,000 — against (A)H1N1 flu last week and we’re continuing to manufacture it,” Adams, chief executive officer of Connecticut-based Protein Sciences Corporation, told AFP.

As the world begins to move beyond the financial crisis, the global food crisis that occupied center stage in 2008 seems relegated to collective amnesia. It brought the issues of global food security to the forefront, but then food prices moved back to their pre-crisis trends and it went away as quickly as it had come. However, the fundamental causes that triggered the rapid price increases and the riots that ensued, in some areas, have not changed.

The spike in grain prices can be attributed to poor harvests in various parts of the world, lower food stocks held in reserve globally, oil price rises, and banning of grain exports in certain grain exporting countries.

University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have discovered an important new insight into how a commonly prescribed drug may work to treat those infected by a parasitic flatworm.

The Schistosomasis parasite infects about 200 million people in tropical areas worldwide and is endemic in more than 70 countries, where people become infected simply by bathing, drinking, or cooking water contaminated with the flatworm. Although not immediately deadly, left untreated, the disease can permanently damage the lungs, kidney, liver, and intestines and ultimately lead to death.

The pandemic sparked by swine flu may be as severe as the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 that cost an estimated 0.7 percent of global gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

The new H1N1 flu strain might reduce second-quarter GDP by as much as 2.2 percent in Mexico if disruptions to businesses, including those in the restaurant, hotel and transportation industries, persist in the Mexico City region, the Washington- based lender said.

AGAINST the background of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) declaration of a global swine flu pandemic, the first in 40 years since the 1968 Hong Kong flu, the Federal Government’s recent announcement of a local outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in Delta State ought to be a source of further concern to health authorities across the country. No effort should be spared to check the spread of the flu.

The swift response to the ASF threat by the Federal Ministry of Health and the Delta State Government is commendable. The ministry’s statement that the ASF “affects only pigs and not humans due to the fact that it is a zoonotic disease” is reassuring.