care Prof:
House Passes War Supplemental Spending Bill; Includes Fund For Haiti
The House on Tuesday passed a $59 billion war supplemental spending bill by a vote of 308-114, which will now be sent to President Barack Obama “for his signature,” CongressDaily reports (Sanchez, 7/28). The bill includes “$2.8 billion for relief efforts in Haiti,” Foreign Policy’s blog “The Cable” notes (Rogin, 7/27).
Kenya To Roll Out Safer ARV Regimen
Kenya will switch its HIV therapy regimens to contain a less toxic combination of drugs in line with Globe Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, PlusNews reports. Patients is going to be initiated on the safer drugs “as soon as subsequent month [August],” in accordance with Ibrahim Mohamed, director of Kenya’s National AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections Control Programme. “WHO has recommended that [antiretroviral drug] Stavudine be replaced with less toxic drugs like Tenofovir (TDF) or Zidovudine, better known as AZT. A number of the side-effects of Stavudine contain nerve harm and changes in body shape.” The article also discusses patients’ reaction, 1 of “cautious excitement,” and funding concerns, which Mohamed stated will make the roll out gradual: “we expect to phase it [Stavudine] out completely by the finish of four to five years” (7/27).
Florida At Risk Of Dengue Outbreak, Expert Says
“An epidemic of dengue fever inside the Caribbean and Latin America has increased the risk of an outbreak of the sometimes deadly mosquito-borne virus in South Florida, a bioclimatologist and dengue expert said on Tuesday,” Reuters reports. The state’s “proximity to affected countries,” and similar tropical climate increased the possibility of dengue spreading in Florida, Douglas Fuller, chair of University of Miami’s Geography and Regional Studies, told the news service. Fuller also noted Florida’s desires to “put a lot more effort into early warning capacity, preventative kinds of measures, rather than reactive measures based on passive surveillance” (Fletcher, 7/27).
Meanwhile, the Palm Beach Post features an write-up about the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute-Florida in Port St. Lucie, which has been “researching dengue fever for years” and has discovered leads they hope will foster vaccine and therapy developments. Specifically, the institute has been “examining the human immune system’s responses to dengue fever compared with its response to yellow fever, a similar mosquito-transmitted virus for which an effective vaccine has existed given that the mid-20th century” (Duret, 7/27).
CBC Reports On Needle-Free ‘Nano-Patch’ Vaccine
Researchers in Australia have “developed a needle-free, dissolving vaccination that they say could possibly be mailed to households in the course of a pandemic,” CBC reports. The “nano-patch,” which researchers described in a paper in the journal Small, is smaller than a postage stamp and does not require to be refrigerated. “When the patch is placed against the skin, the projections push through the outer skin layer and deliver the biomolecules towards the target cells,” in accordance with the CBC. The new patch, which has not but undergone clinical trials, uses one-100th of the dose found in a needle so the “cost to the wellness program is reduced,” explained study co-author Mark Kendall of the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Biotechnology and Nanotechnology (7/27).
Merck Forms Joint Venture With Chinese Pharmaceutical Group Sinopharm
The pharmaceutical company Merck on Tuesday announced “it will team up with Sinopharm, a huge Chinese distributor and maker of pharmaceutical as well as other wellness products,” the Related Press reports. “In its latest move to expand in emerging markets, Merck will form a joint venture with Sinopharm, cooperating on vaccines for illnesses such as human papillomavirus in China,” the news service writes (Johnson, 7/27). As component of the agreement, the companies “will also discuss the potential for promoting and marketing Merck’s pharmaceutical products in China,” based on a Merck press release (7/27).
“Merck as well as other Western drug companies are rushing to grab market share in emerging markets including China and India,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Rivals such as Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC believe much with the industry’s growth in coming years is going to be in these countries, as expanding middle classes gain better access to health care, and changes in lifestyle increase the prevalence of certain chronic illnesses like diabetes” (Loftus, 7/27). Merck “has projected that much more than 25 percent of its pharmaceutical and vaccine sales will come from emerging markets by 2013, up from 17 percent currently,” according to Reuters (7/28).
This details was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Every day Global Well being Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.
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