As recently as a few years ago, patients infected with HIV living in Africa were likely to be turned away from health clinics, with no help for treatment in sight. They were told to go home and plan their funerals. This was the story old on NPR news radio this week. But a few recent studies may presage a different ending to this sad story. Read more »

At this week’s Partnering for Global  Health Forum, sponsored by BIO and BioVentures for Global Health, in Washington, DC, a unique panel of government leaders from emerging markets discussed what it takes to do business in their countries. Among the panelists were: Argentina’s Lino Barañao, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovative Production; India’s T. Madham Mohan, the Ministry of Science and Technology Biotechnology Department Advisor; South Africa’s Bongi Gumede, Senior General Manager, Technology Innovation and Marketing, Technology Innovation Agency; and Brazil’s Julio Ramundo, Managing Director, Venture Capital, Environmental and Capital Markets Division, Brazilian Development Bank. Also on the panel to provide analysis and perspective was industry expert Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company. Read more »

This week has seen several pharma companies slashing the prices of important vaccines for use in developing countries, but is the move spurred by simple generosity alone? There are often headlines about pharma companies’ drug donations to developing countries and I think it’s great to see the pharma industry making a difference in this area. However, the price reductions may also stem from something other than generosity: the need to compete with other vaccine manufacturers, particularly at a time where more and more low-cost generic medicines are becoming available. Read more »

As Earth Day (April 22) approaches, many environmentalists and policymakers are discussing steps for the future with regard to reducing carbon footprints, saving energy, and restoring the world’s deteriorating ecosystems. In fact, a key debate on the blogosphere and news wires this week surrounds the issue of the environmental refugee—a term used by the UN and others to define a person that has been displaced because of environmental causes, notably land loss and degradation of land, and natural disaster, according to the UN Statistics Division. Read more »

Shared value. Partnerships. Collaborative innovation. We hear these words a lot in defining the ideals of successful business relationships, but they also are very much at the center of public, joint public–private, industry, and individual efforts in developing solutions for broader global concerns. The connections, energy, talents, and resourcefulness that are at the heart of those solutions were the focus of the Women in the World Summit, held in New York last month. Organized by the Daily Beast and Newsweek, the summit generated an instructive and meaningful dialogue on the diversified approaches that are and can be used to advance the role of women, particularly in developing countries, inclusive of global health initiatives.  Read more »

Improving drug quality and combating the threat of counterfeit and substandard medications were the goals of recent efforts by regulators and leaders across Africa, where fake drugs are a particularly serious problem. Read more »

A new clinical trial for an AIDS vaccine will take place in Africa and the United States. The program, announced this week, is a collaboration between the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), which will lead the trial, biopharmaceutical company Crucell (Leiden, Netherlands), Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Ragon Institute, an organization dedicated to HIV/AIDS research. Read more »

If you’re not familiar with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), they are a set of eight targets defined and committed to by the member states of the United Nations in 2000 to reduce extreme poverty worldwide. The idea is to achieve the goals (specific measureable indicators are set for each) by the year 2015. The goals cover issues such as reducing hunger and developing global partnerships, but several of them address health issues, including the Goals 4 and 5, which focus on promoting child and maternal health (e.g., reducing under age-5 mortality and increasing access to reproductive care), and Goal 6,which focuses on combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

In light of the changing global public health landscape, I think the UN should consider revising the MDGs before 2015, or at least devising a new set of health-based goals when the time comes. Read more »

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) recently announced a new program designed to fight the growing problem of substandard and counterfeit drugs in developing countries. Read more »

One of the International Criminal Police Organization’s (Interpol) six priority crime research areas is drugs and criminal organizations. As reported in the New York Times on July 20, the organization is working with an informal group of researchers and government officials in Africa, Asia, and the US to track counterfeit drugs that claim to treat malaria, a disease that takes nearly 1 million lives a year. Read more »