Health
WHO Calls For Urgent Action to Ramp-up Production of COVID-19 Vaccines
AN) The World Health Organisation (WHO) says urgent action is needed to increase production of COVID-19 vaccines that will be distributed through the global initiative making these medicines accessible to all countries.
The WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, made the call at biweekly news briefing on COVID-19 at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
In his speech posted on its website, he said this was a landmark week for COVAX.
“In total, COVAX has delivered more than 20 million doses of vaccine to 20 countries. In the next week, COVAX will deliver 14.4 million doses to a further 31 countries.
“The volume of doses being distributed through COVAX is still relatively small.
One of our main priorities now is to increase the ambition of COVAX to help all countries end the pandemic.“This means urgent action to ramp up production. Next week, WHO and our COVAX partners will meet with partners from governments and the industry to identify bottlenecks in production and discuss how to solve them,’’ he said.
Ghebreyesus also said this was a landmark week for COVAX, with the first vaccinations starting in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
In addition to those two countries, COVAX had now delivered vaccines to Angola, Cambodia, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Gambia, India, Kenya, Lesotho and Malawi.
He said COVAX had also delivered vaccines to Mali, Moldova, Nigeria, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda.
The director-general said WHO and its COVAX partners would meet with government and industry representatives next week to identify “bottlenecks” and relevant solutions.
“We currently face several barriers to increasing the speed and volume of production, from export bans to shortages of raw materials including glass, plastic and stoppers,’’ he said.
According to him, WHO is working on four approaches to the issue, including calling for waiving patent rights for vaccines.
“Many countries with vaccine manufacturing capacity can start producing their own vaccines by waiving intellectual property rights, as provided for in the TRIPS agreement”.
The TRIPS Agreement, which came into effect on January 1, 1995, is to date the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property adopted by all 194 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
He said those provisions were there for use in emergencies saying, “if now is not a time to use them, then when?
“This is unprecedented time, and WHO believes that this is a time to trigger that provision and waive patent rights”.
Ghebreyesus said, in the short-term, the UN health agency was connecting companies that produce vaccines with others that had excess capacity to fill and finish them.
He, however, cited the partnership between Johnson & Johnson and Merck, announced this week, as an example.
“We need more partnerships like this, and we need them in all regions,” the director-general said.
In addition, he said WHO was also advocating bilateral technology transfers, so that companies that owned vaccine patents could license them to another company.
“A good example of this approach is AstraZeneca, which has transferred the technology for its vaccine to SKBio in the Republic of Korea and the Serum Institute of India, which is producing AstraZeneca vaccines for COVAX”. (NAN)
Hundreds of millions of children and adolescents around the world face daily violence in their homes, schools, and elsewhere which could have lifelong consequences.The World Health Organisation (WHO) said this on Thursday.The violence includes being hit by family members, being bullied at school, as well as physical, emotional, and sexual violence, WHO said.
In most cases, violence occurs behind closed doors. More than half of those aged two to 17 or more than a billion minors in total experience violence each year according to the WHO. In three out of five children and adolescents, it is physical violence at home, with one in five girls and one in seven boys experiencing sexual violence.Between a quarter and half of minors are affected by bullying according to the information provided.Only half of the children reportedly talk about their experiences of violence and less than 10 per cent receive help.Lifelong consequences could include depression and anxiety disorders, or tobacco and drug use.As a result, many children do not reach their learning potential in school.Against the backdrop of being highly preventable, violence remains a horrific day-to-day reality for millions of children around the world leaving scars that span generations,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general.The UN’s first conference on violence against children opened in Bogota, Columbia on Thursday.At the two-day conference, more than 100 countries pledged to find ways to better support overwhelmed parents and introduce school programmes against bullying and for healthy social behaviour.They also pledged to raise the minimum age for marriage.Some countries wish to generally ban children from being hit at school or home. (dpa/NAN)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has listed 17 bacteria, viruses and parasites that regularly cause disease as top priorities for new vaccine development.WHO, in a study published on Tuesday, reconfirmed long-standing priorities for vaccine research and development (R&D), including for HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis – three diseases that collectively take nearly 2.
5 million lives yearly. The study is the first global effort to systematically prioritise endemic pathogens based on their regional and global health impact. Attention is also given to pathogens such as Group A streptococcus, which causes severe infections and contributes to 280,000 deaths from rheumatic heart disease, mainly in lower-income countries.Another new priority is Klebsiella pneumoniae — a bacteria that was associated with 790,000 deaths in 2019 and is responsible for 40 per cent of neonatal deaths due to blood infection (sepsis) in low-income countries.The new study supports the goal of ensuring that everyone, everywhere, can benefit from vaccines that protect against serious diseases.It aims to shift the focus in vaccine development away from commercial returns towards regional and global health needs, WHO’s Dr Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz, who works in vaccine research, said in a statement.He explained that in the past, vaccine R&D typically was influenced by profitability.“As a result, diseases that severely affect low-income regions received little attention.“We hope this represents a critical shift where we want to change the focus from commercial perspective profitability of new vaccines towards the actual health burden so that the new vaccine research and development is driven by health burden and not just commercial opportunities,” he said.To carry out the study, WHO asked international and regional experts what they think is important when prioritising pathogens for vaccines R&D.Criteria included deaths, disease and socioeconomic impact, or antimicrobial resistance.“We had asked experts that have expertise in pathogen epidemiology, clinicians, paediatricians, vaccine experts from all of the WHO regions, to ensure that the list and the results that we produce really reflect the needs of diverse populations worldwide,” Hasso-Agopsowicz said.Analysis of those preferences, combined with regional data for each pathogen, resulted in the top 10 priority pathogens for each of WHO’s six regions globally.The regional lists were then consolidated to form the global list, resulting in the 17 priority endemic pathogens for which new vaccines are urgently needed.To advance vaccine R&D, WHO has categorised each pathogen based on the stage of vaccine development and the technical challenges involved in creating effective vaccines.Hasso-Agopsowicz said the study is expected to guide future vaccine R&D investments, including funders, researchers and vaccine developers, and also policymakers as they “can decide whether to introduce these vaccines into immunisation programmes.” (NAN)
The Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU), University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan,has suspended the strike it embarked on Oct. 25.The workers resumed work on Friday morning.The seven-day nationwide warning industrial action embarked upon by the unions was to press home their demands ofadjustment of Consolidated Health Salary Structure as was done with the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure sinceJan.
2, 2014 and implementation of consultant cadre for pharmacists in federal health institutions. Others are upward review in the retirement age from 60 to 65 years for health workers and 70 years for consultants, andpayment of outstanding salaries of JOHESU members in professional regulatory councils.The UCH JOHESU Chairman, Mr Oladayo Olabampe, said that the strike was suspended as directed by the national body.He explained that “the suspension followed an MoU signed between JOHESU national leadership and Federal Government.“The Federal Government asked for a maximum of six weeks counting from Oct. 31, to meet our demands.“Based on the MoU signed, the JOHESU National Executive Council met and resolved that the strike be suspended on Fridaynationwide.”According to him, JOHESU UCH is obeying the order, and workers have resumed work.Olabampe said that if the demands were not met after the six weeks, they would embark on an indefinite strike. (NAN)
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