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As the bloodbath continues in the international banking industry, SARPAM’s Oliver Withers has more than one reason to feel pleased that he has escaped the City of London. Oliver, the lead for Impact Investing at SARPAM, returned from the South African Impact Investing Conference in Johannesburg this month feeling certain that the time is exactly right to have made the switch to Impact Investing.

Taking zinc may cut the time adults suffer with a common cold, but consuming it will likely come with unpleasant side effects such as nausea, according to a review of past studies.
Michelle Science, from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and her colleagues compiled data from 17 clinical trials covering 2,121 people, comparing those who took zinc orally to another group that either took a placebo or received no treatment.

TThere have been ongoing shortages of antiretroviral medicines, specifically tenofovir (TDF) and abacavir (ABC) since March in facilities across South Africa. These shortages are compromising the health of patients taking these medicines. We call for urgent resolution of the shortages and for an enquiry into their cause. TDF and ABC are both essential medicines.

Tanzania has been selected to host a three-day private health sector conference from May 14-16 organised by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in collaboration with development partners.
The conference will focus on partnerships with participants from the private and public health sectors and members of the civil society, academia and donor agencies.

At the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit held in Cape Town last week, Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa shared insights on how Ericsson’s technology is for a force for good to enable the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Mwambu Wanendeya, vice president for communications and sustainability for sub-Saharan Africa, delivered a keynote address titled ‘The Vision of a Networked Society.’

East Africa celebrated the launch of its Medicines Registration Harmonisation Project in March. The Business Day, South Africa’s national business daily, was interested to find out what stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry, thought about what this meant for the wider region. SARPAM director Dr Shaun Conway told the newspaper that the development was in the interests of regional integration.

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan paid tribute to Namibia for having successfully rolled back malaria cases.
Speaking at the World Malaria Day commemoration at Oshakati on Wednesday, 25 April she lauded the local people, all regional leaders with the support of the central government, for having dramatically reduced malaria cases and putting Namibia on the world map as one of the success stories in combating malaria.

Mama Jane Moyo (52) shudders with anxiety every time a family member falls ill and needs to visit the clinic for medical attention. As if illness in the family was not bad enough, the nearest community health centre, the Malisa Clinic, is a round-trip of more than 25km from her rural homestead in the Zhombe district of Zimbabwe. In order to get to the Malisa Clinic, Mama Moyo and the sick family member must hitch a ride on a donkey or ox cart.

The NEPAD Agency and the East African Community, in collaboration with the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation Programme partners, launched the EAC Medicines Registration Harmonisation Project on 30 March 2012 at Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, Arusha, Tanzania.

The South African government is pleased to announce a joint venture between the South African government, through Pelchem (Pty) Ltd and a leading global pharmaceutical company Lonza Ltd. This joint venture named “Ketlaphela”, will establish the first pharmaceutical plant to manufacture Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) for Anti-Retroviral Medicines (ARV’s) in South Africa.

Lesotho, often called the "Kingdom in the sky", has one of the highest rates of new tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world. The lack of health-care facilities in remote areas makes it hard for people with TB to get tested and treated, so the disease spreads quickly through communities.

There are 33 million people around the world who live with HIV. With access to appropriate medicines, they can all continue to live with it: live longer lives, and healthier ones. New research demonstrates that with access to treatment they are far less likely to pass on the virus to others. This means the key to getting the upper hand on the Aids epidemic is within reach, if only medicines could be made available for all of the people who need them.

Two billion men and women in developing countries cannot get essential medicines. Once every seven years, world experts meet to discuss misuse of medicines in low- and middle income countries at the International Conference for Improving Use of Medicines. Click here to read the press release.

Patent rights seem to supercede patient rights now that the debate about substandard and poor quality medicines has been hijacked by powerful forces. The fight against substandard medicines has been steered away from human rights and public health, energies have been diverted and language has been manipulated to change the focus towards protecting intellectual property and commercial interests.

Unprecedented global campaign launches against pharma company Medicines campaigners target Abbott over the high price of its Aids drug, Kaletra. Meanwhile an independent but GAVI-funded study shows the roll-out of pneumococcal vaccine it is supporting is cost-effective Anti-retroviral drugs. Prices have come down dramatically, but Abbott is accused of keeping the cost of [...]

A Kenyan pharmaceutical company has been given the green light by the World Health Organization (WHO) to start producing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which could result in significant savings for the government’s growing treatment programme. “While this is good news for us as a drug manufacturing company, it is [...]

The Medicines Control Council (MCC) has obtained an urgent court order to stop the continued sale of potentially deadly medicines.

A specific training guide for pharmaceutical reform using the Harvard/World Bank Flagship course model was developed by Professors Michael Reich and Marc Roberts over the last few years.

The course materials have now been published by the World Bank in a book, which is available as a free PDF download

The world’s top drugmakers have slashed prices for medicines to fight AIDS and malaria. Now the debate is moving to the next level as pressure builds for them to do more against chronic diseases in poor countries.

Pooled procurement is the overarching term for procurement where part or all of the procurement processes of different procurement entities are jointly executed by either one of those procurement entities or a third party.