Essential Medicines News

Andrew Jack, “GSK Varies Prices to Raise Sales,” The Financial Times, 16 March 2008.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has begun a scheme of tiered pricing of its medicines in low- and middle-income countries. The policy is being tested in India, South Africa and Morocco, to ensure the greatest availability of their products, while still recovering R&D […]

“Scientists Identify New Leads for Treating Parasitic Worm Disease,” Eurekalert, 16 March 2008.
Nature Medicine has published a study showing that oxadiazoles can effectively control schistosomiasis. For the past two decades, praziquatel has been the sole drug used to treat this disease in the 70 tropical nations that require annual or semi-annual drug treatment. […]

“Newly Developed Anti-Malarial Medicine Treats Toxoplasmosis,” University of Chicago Press Release, 5 March 2008.
A recent article in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases shows that an anti-malarial entering clinical trials appears to be 10 times more effective than the standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease that affects nearly two billion people worldwide.
The drug, JPC-2056, […]

Michael Wines, “Virulent TB in South Africa May Imperil Millions”  New York Times, 28 January 2007.
A virulent strain of tuberculosis has killed many in South Africa over the past year and may be spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
“ Several expressed concern at what they called South Africa’s sluggish response to a health emergency that, left unchecked, could prove hugely […]

Julie Clayton, “Calls for fast access to sleeping sickness drug,” SciDev.net, 10 January 2007.
Preliminary results for the use of eflornithine with nifurtimox against sleeping sickness have led the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda to call for greater access to these drugs before the clinical trials have completed. While the WHO […]

Coimbra Sirica and Bee Wuethrich, “Rotavirus’ Rise from Obscurity in Latin America,” field note, Global Health Council, 8 January 2007.
Latin American countries have quickly adopted the rotavirus vaccine and are making it part of their childhood vaccination programs. Communications strategies played a key role in increasing the speed of vaccine adoption through bringing together […]

Orin Levine and Michael J. Klag, “Vaccines for the vulnerable around the world,” op-ed, The Baltimore Sun, 3 January 2007.
Each year, 2 million to 3 million children in developing countries, mainly in Africa, die from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines available today. …
A major roadblock to developing and deploying vaccines that prevent such […]

Tom Kington, “Climate change brings malaria back to Italy,” The Guardian, 6 January 2007.
Diseases normally thought to be exclusively problems of the developing world, such as malaria, tick-borne encephalitis, and visceral leishmaniasis, have been appearing with greater frequency in Italy. Over the past 20 years, the average temperature has crept up 0.7°C, changing the […]

JR Minkel, “How Much AIDS Vaccine Do Poor Countries Really Want?,” Scientific American, 3 January 2007.
Sanofi-Aventis and Novartis have experienced about half the expected demand for their drugs artesunate and coartem which they have produced specifically for treatment of malaria in the developing world. This weak demand, which is inconsistent with the actual felt […]

Jeffery Sachs, “The Neglected Tropical Diseases,” Scientific American, January 2007.
Merck & Co., Glaxo­SmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Novartis and Sanofi-Pasteur have donated millions of dollars in medicines to aid those with treatable diseases in many developing countries. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, calls upon developed governments to contribute more in […]