UN and world leaders call for elimination of travel bans based on HIV status

UNAIDS – the United Nations agency tasked with fighting the spread of HIV – has supported a call made by the world’s parliamentarians to lift travel restrictions for people living with the disease. (UN Daily News – March 29, 2010)

Currently, 52 countries, territories and areas have some form of HIV-specific restriction on entry, stay and residence – including banning tourists or study – based on positive HIV status.

“Travel restrictions for people living with HIV do not protect public health and are outdated in the age of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment,” said Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director.

In January, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNAIDS congratulated the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States for lifting “discriminatory” travel limits that previously prevented people living with HIV from entering both nations.

GAVI improves access to vaccines – could save close to 1 million lives by 2015

Drugmakers Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline signed a landmark 10-year deal on Tuesday to supply 60 million doses a year of cut-price pneumococcal vaccines to developing nations (Reuters).   The deal, brokered by the Geneva-based Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), is the first under a new scheme called an Advance Market Commitment (AMC) which guarantees a market for vaccines supplied to poor nations but sets a maximum price drugmakers can expect to receive.

GAVI estimates that the introduction of new vaccines against pneumococcal disease — which causes serious illnesses such as pneumonia and meningitis — could save around 900,000 lives by 2015 and up to seven million lives by 2030. GAVI said it plans to introduce pneumococcal vaccines in 47 countries by 2015.

This AMC deal could pave the way for future deals on recently introduced vaccines against rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea, and an experimental treatment against malaria, which combined kill millions in poor countries each year.

The AMC scheme was devised to try to encourage drug companies to make and supply medicines and vaccines to boost health in poorer countries, which are generally unable to afford the treatments.  Both Pfizer and Glaxo expressed interest in future AMC deals, saying they are committed to tiered pricing structures to ensure their drugs can get to the people who need them most.

WHO report: drug resistant TB at record levels

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is now at record levels with Asia bearing the brunt of the epidemic, says the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in a recent report.

In some parts of the world, one in four people with TB becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs, according to WHO’s Multidrug and Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: 2010 Global Report on Surveillance and Response.

Nearly one-third of the 440,000 people with multidrug-resistant form of the disease (MDR-TB) in 2008 died, the report stated.

Almost half of the MDR-TB cases occurred in China, where the first nationwide drug resistance survey was conducted, and India. In Africa, estimates show 69,000 cases emerged, the vast majority of which went undiagnosed.

Even in the presence of severe epidemics, governments and partners can turn around MDR-TB by strengthening efforts to control the disease and implementing WHO recommendations, the report noted.

World TB Day 2010

March 24 is World TB Day.  As of March 2009, more than 9 million people develop active TB each year and 1.7 million die from the disease.

While most TB cases are in Asia, the highest rates of TB are in Africa, where high rates of HIV weaken immune systems and accelerate the spread of TB. (Gates Foundation)

One-third of the world’s population has been infected with the TB bacterium. Although most do not have symptoms and are not contagious, some develop “active” TB, which is contagious.

For more information, visit the Stop TB Partnership site.

Health, Safety and IP – a public consultation

The newly appointed Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator in the U.S. has recently initiated a public consultation on the health-related costs and risks of intellectual property infringement.  The consultation (open to individuals, patient groups, NGOs, academics and other interested parties) is asking for comments on:

- safety issues resulting from IP infringement (such as counterfeit and/or sub-standard medicines)

- economic costs of IP infringement (research that shows intellectual property accounts for 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 40 percent of U.S. economic growth).

Deadline: Submissions must be received on or before Wednesday, March 24, 2010, at 5 p.m.

How to submit: Submissions should be sent electronically to intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov.

More information on the consultation (PDF)

$4.3 billion needed to fund vaccines for world’s poor

$4.3 billion is needed if the GAVI Alliance is to meet its goal of supplying life-saving immunizations to millions of children in poor countries by 2015.  In 2000, world leaders from 189 countries signed up to the Millennium Development Goals to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

GAVI, which is supported by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and vaccine makers, says it has 40 percent of the $7 billion it needs between now and 2015 to help meet that goal.

“With $7 billion, (GAVI) will be able to fully roll out pentavalent vaccine and introduce new vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus diarrhea in over 40 countries,” it said in a statement. “These last two vaccines alone can save one million children by 2015.”

The scale of GAVI’s buying and distribution power allows it to secure much lower prices for vaccines, which are then supplied to poor nations at a fraction of their cost.

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Ecuador eliminates river blindness

Ecuador has become the second country in the Americas to stop the transmission of river blindness (onchoceriasis), a disease that can cause blindness, skin rashes, lesions, intense itching and skin depigmentation. The parasitic disease is caused by the filarial worm and is spread by the bite of infected black flies.

Major progress in combating the disease was made in the late 1980s, when Merck offered to donate Mectizan, a drug used to treat and prevent river blindness. Ecuador’s ministry of health began distributing Mectizan in 1990.

In 1993, the Carter Center spearheaded the launch of the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program of the Americas, which worked with several global health groups, including the World Health Organization, to target Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela.

Since the launch of OEPA, twice-annual doses of Mectizan have been administered to residents in at-risk communities. It’s led to 85 percent treatment coverage in each country and prompted Colombia to announce in 2008 that it had stopped transmission of the disease.