Today, WHO announces it is the first of the United Nations agencies to join a coalition of research funders and charitable foundations (cOAlition S), an initiative to make full and immediate open access to research publications a reality
Today, WHO announces it is the first of the United Nations agencies to join a coalition of research funders and charitable foundations (cOAlition S), an initiative to make full and immediate open access to research publications a reality
Today, WHO announces it is the first of the United Nations agencies to join a coalition of research funders and charitable foundations (cOAlition S), an initiative to make full and immediate open access to research publications a reality. cOAlition S is built around Plan S, which consists of 10 principles to ensure that the results from publicly-funded research, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.
“WHO champions the right of everybody to access quality health care services, and our support for open access to the health research that underpins that care goes hand-in-hand with that commitment,” said WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan. “By joining this coalition, we believe we can accelerate progress towards universal free access to health research – an ambition that supports our current strategy of one billion more people benefiting from universal health coverage over the next five years.”
Image: By art designer at PLoS, modified by Wikipedia users Nina, Beao, and JakobVoss – http://www.plos.org/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5069489
“Polypills” of generic drugs may dramatically reduce heart attacks and strokes in poor countries, a new study suggests. Some experts still aren’t enthusiastic
“Polypills” of generic drugs may dramatically reduce heart attacks and strokes in poor countries, a new study suggests. Some experts still aren’t enthusiastic
“The polypill concept is very important and it’s surprising that it’s taking so long for people to accept it,” said Dr. Salim Yusuf, director of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Canada and an expert on cardiac health in poor countries, who was not involved in the Iran study. “This study takes us one step closer.”
Other leading cardiologists consider the approach unethical and dangerous. Because aspirin, statins and blood-pressure drugs all have side effects, they argue, no one should get them without first being assessed for risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol or family history.
“I’m a skeptic of the one-size-fits-all, four-drugs-for-everyone approach,” said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, head of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “It runs counter to what most of us in the U.S. consider good medical practice.”
Globally, more than two-thirds of researchers find it difficult to prepare manuscripts and to respond to peer-review comments, finds a survey of nearly 7,000 researchers from over 100 countries.
The issues may stem largely from language barriers, the report suggests (see ‘English-language barrier’). The online survey was designed to find out what issues researchers in non-English-speaking nations face when publishing in international journals to identify where more support or resources are needed.
Most respondents spoke English as a second language: only 11% had English as a first language and 45% said that they found it difficult to write in English.
The poll was carried out between December 2016 and January 2018 by Editage, a company that offers language editing and publication support services for academics. The results were released on 9 October. …
The pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc. is ending a long-term agreement to supply a lifesaving vaccine for children in West Africa. At the same time, the company has started sending the vaccine to China, where it will likely be sold for a much higher price
The pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc. is ending a long-term agreement to supply a lifesaving vaccine for children in West Africa. At the same time, the company has started sending the vaccine to China, where it will likely be sold for a much higher price
The vaccine is for a deadly form of diarrhea, called rotavirus, which kills about 200,000 young children and babies each year.
Merck’s decision means it will fall short of its commitment to supply its rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, to four low-income countries in 2018 and 2019, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. By 2020, the company will completely stop delivering its vaccine.
“This was difficult decision for us, which did not come lightly,” Merck wrote to NPR in an email. “We would like to express our deepest regret to all of the parties involved and have offered to assist and work with UNICEF, Gavi and affected countries through the transition to alternative images [versions] of rotavirus vaccines,” the email added.
The Trump administration has announced further cuts in aid to the Palestinians — this time, cutting money to cover cancer treatments and other critical care for Palestinians at Jerusalem hospitals
The Trump administration has announced further cuts in aid to the Palestinians — this time, cutting money to cover cancer treatments and other critical care for Palestinians at Jerusalem hospitals
A State Department official told NPR the administration is pulling $25 million it had planned to give to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, a group of six hospitals, some church-run, providing care primarily to Palestinians.
In past years, U.S. funding covered medical costs for Palestinians to go to these hospitals for treatment unavailable in the West Bank and Gaza — from cardiac and eye surgeries to neonatal intensive care and children’s dialysis, according to the World Health Organization.
President Trump said he’s cut aid for the Palestinians to pressure them on a peace deal with Israel. …
When it comes to controlling the AIDS pandemic, Botswana is in many ways a model for the world. Last year, the country became one of the first to achieve ambitious United Nations goals for universal access to timely, high-quality treatment of HIV, doing so years before the United States is projected to reach the same targets.
But even in Botswana, a collective failure of the global fight is on stark display: an inability to protect the poorest individuals with HIV from an infection called cryptococcal meningitis, or “crypto” as it’s commonly known.
One of the biggest reasons, say infectious disease experts, is the lack of access in Africa to a key component of the crypto treatment regimen, a 60-year-old antifungal drug called flucytosine that should cost a few dollars a day but is now vastly more expensive than that.
There are now several experimental treatments vying to be tested, but each must be greenlit by national regulatory authorities whenever and wherever an outbreak occurs. There remain deeply divergent positions among scientists about how to design outbreak trials, specifically whether studies that don’t compare treatments to placebos can generate useful data
There are now several experimental treatments vying to be tested, but each must be greenlit by national regulatory authorities whenever and wherever an outbreak occurs. There remain deeply divergent positions among scientists about how to design outbreak trials, specifically whether studies that don’t compare treatments to placebos can generate useful data
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may end without the available experimental drugs having been tested, given the way transmission appears to have slowed. And some experts who have watched with frustration the snail’s pace progress of the efforts to study Ebola drugs during outbreaks are beginning to wonder if, with the advent of Ebola vaccines, the window for doing this kind of research may be closing for good.
There are now several experimental treatments vying to be tested, but each must be greenlit by national regulatory authorities whenever and wherever an outbreak occurs. There remain deeply divergent positions among scientists about how to design outbreak trials, specifically whether studies that don’t compare treatments to placebos can generate useful data. Add to that the fact that outbreaks are sporadic, and are often stopped after a few dozen cases.
A rare, brain-damaging virus that experts consider a possible epidemic threat has broken out in the state of Kerala, India, for the first time, infecting at least 18 people and killing 17 of them, according to the World Health Organization.
The Nipah virus naturally resides in fruit bats across South and Southeast Asia, and can spread to humans through contact with the animals’ bodily fluids. There is no vaccine and no cure.
The virus is listed by the W.H.O. as a high priority for research. Current treatment measures are insufficient, according to Dr. Stuart Nichol, the head of the viral special pathogens branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.