Posted on November 23, 2009 by Patients and Patents
An interesting article from the Financial Express, based in India, on counterfeit medicines and how they are being marketed.
Barely four months after China-made fake drugs with deceptive ‘Made in India’ labels were seized in Nigeria, more cases of spurious drugs are surfacing in the Indian market with alleged links to China.
Recently, seized samples of human immunoglobin injection used in the case of multiple sclerosis, bone marrow transplantation, chronic B-cell lymphocytic leukemia, pediatric HIV-1 infection among others, which were declared spurious by the drug regulator office in Rajasthan were allegedly manufactured by a Chinese company.
Earlier in June this year, the Nigerian drug regulator seized large consignments of fake anti-malarial generic pharmaceuticals labelled `Made in India’, which were later, found to be produced in China.
Filed under: Counterfeit drugs | Tagged: China, Counterfeit drugs, counterfeit medicines, India | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 28, 2009 by Patients and Patents
Addressing five critical risk factors – underweight childhood, unsafe sex, alcohol use, lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and high blood pressure – could add almost five years to global life expectancy, according to a new United Nations report.
These five factors are responsible for one quarter of the 60 million deaths estimated to occur annually, said the UN World Health Organization (WHO), which published “Global Health Risks.”
A health risk is defined in the report as “a factor that raises the probability of adverse health outcomes.” It looked at 24 of them which are a mixture of environmental, behavioural and physiological factors – such as air pollution, tobacco use and poor nutrition – and estimated their effects on deaths, diseases and injuries by region, age, sex and country income for the year 2004.
“Understanding the relative importance of health risk factors helps governments to figure out which health policies they want to pursue,” said Colin Mathers, Coordinator for Mortality and Burden of Disease at WHO.
Filed under: Public health, World Health Organization | Tagged: Public health, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
UNAIDS report: 33.4 million worldwide have HIV, but infections slow
A newly released United Nations report on HIV says that while the disease has killed 25 million people worldwide, the rate of new infections is slowing sharply. The UNAIDS agency report says the number of newly infected grew by 2.7 million in 2008, bringing the world total to 33.4 million.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the scourge of AIDS is most keenly felt, there were 400,000 fewer new infections last year, down 15 percent when compared to figures from 2001.
During the same time period, new HIV infections in East Asia declined by 25 percent and by 10 percent in south and southeast Asia.
The report says the availability of life-saving HIV drugs is helping more people live longer.
Filed under: Commentary on news & events, Public health, World Health Organization | Tagged: access to medicines, AIDS, United Nations | Leave a Comment »