News - Regions

 The European Medicines Agency has cleared the world' s first malaria vaccine, prior to prior to its approval for use in Africa. The vaccine (Mosquirix) was developed by Glaxo-SmithKline, who have pledged not to profit from the vaccine. It is designed to target infection in children in Africa, although it does not appear to be very effective in protecting young babies – children aged 5–17 months seem to benefit the most, with a 33% reduction in cases over four years. Unfortunately , the vaccine cannot be administered alongside other childhood vaccines, and children must receive all shots (including a booster shot) to benefit. However, even a partially effective vaccine can help countries with high infection rates. Prof Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute, Oxford said " a bed net is more effective that this vaccine, but nonetheless it is a very significant scientific achievement. I see it as a building block towards much more effective malaria vaccines in years to come. " (BBC, 24 Jul 2015)  The Islamic Development Bank (IBD) has pledged US$ 360 million of financing to support the post–Ebola recovery effort in Sierra Leone and Guinea. The announcement was made at the UN–organised International Ebola Recovery Conference, held in New York in July 2015. Guinea would receive US$ 220 million and Sierra Leone US$140 million. Liberia is not a member country of the IBD, but the IDB will support post–Ebola recovery by strengthening partnership through other agencies such as the Arab Co– operation Group. The late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had also donated US$ 35million to the IBD to support the countries affected by Ebola.  The global disease burden for conditions treatable by surgery is twice that of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB combined – and 1–in–3 of the world' s population has no access to surgery. Surgery is also dangerous without appropriate equipment and training–including basic equipment like pulse oximeters, which risks 6 million lives each year. Uganda is working to rectify this by introducing several innovations and improvements. First, surgeons are using simple, cheap and innovative drill covers to perform ortho-paedic surgery using household drills. The NGO Lifebox has distributed cheap and simple pulse oximeters across Ugandan hospitals. Ugandan hospitals are also adopting the WHO' s surgical safety checklist, which can cut death rates and surgical complications by more than 30% by reducing the most common errors. (Al Jazeera, 17 Aug 2015) …