A landmark decision by the Indian Supreme Court to uphold India's Patents Act in the face of the seven-year challenge by pharmaceutical company Novartis has been hailed across the world as a major victory for access to affordable medicines in developing countries.
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MEDIA RELEASE: CAPE TOWN – As the 5th BRICS Summit kicks off today in Durban, the South African government must follow the lead of its BRICS peers to ensure that life-saving medicines are affordable.
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South Africa’s Medicines Control Council (MCC) is set to continue denying compassionate use or pre-approval access to a TB drug that for many drug resistant patients remain their last hope.
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A drug offering a last resort for many patients with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) remains unavailable to desperately ill South Africans as the country’s drug regulatory body continues to delay compassionate access. Health-e News Service tells the story of two young South Africans, one who managed to beat the system and accessBedaquiline, the other coming up against a brick wall and fast running out of options to save her life. By Anso Thom, Health-e News Service
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This past week the national Health Department announced that as from April 2013, AIDS patients will start taking one antiretroviral pill a day that combines the compounds of all three ARVs they need for effective treatment. This has been lauded as making AIDS treatment simple and convenient.
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Phamaceutical drug manufacturer, Novartis South Africa, has taken steps to make an important drug in the treatment of a rare type of leukaemia called chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML), more accessible to patients who need it.
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Lusikisiki- Twelve clinics and two hospitals that fall under the Qaukeni local district are continuing to experience critical drug shortages and stock outs.
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OurHealth: Vhembe – Two local clinics are experiencing critical drug shortages, with both reporting that they are at times only able to dispense Panado.
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About 35% or 500 out of 100 000 strokes that occur in South Africa every year can now be prevented. This is thanks to a new drug registered for use in the country this week for the prevention and management of strokes in people with a heart condition known as Atrial Fibrillation.
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OPINION: Catherine Tomlinson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has published an article on Quackdown that gives a detailed response to criticisms of the TAC and MSF by the Cancer Alliance.
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South Africa’s Medicines Control Council (MCC) has confirmed that it will continue to deny compassionate access to a TB drug that for many drug resistant patients is their last hope.
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PRESS RELEASE: Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis heads to the Indian Supreme Court today in New Delhi, in a final bid to undermine a key public health safeguard in Indian patent law specifically designed to prevent drug companies from abusive patenting practices which keep medicine prices high.
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Two sessions at the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington looked at the way injecting drug use, recreational drug use and unsafe sex interlock to multiply HIV risk, and how new outbreaks of injecting drug use continue to spawn localised HIV epidemics. Read more here.
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Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline LLC (GSK) agreed to plead guilty and to pay $3 billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s unlawful promotion of certain prescription drugs, its failure to report certain safety data, and its civil liability for alleged false price reporting practices, the US Justice Department announced. Read the full US Justice Department statement here
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Decades of poor medical and veterinary antibiotic prescribing and a lack of regard for the practice of infection prevention and control(IPC) in our hospitals have left South Africa, like the rest of the international community, on the brink of a return to an era of untreatable bacterial infection.
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LONDON, 29 June 2012 (IRIN) - Almost one in every five deaths worldwide occurs as a result of infection, but many bacterial illnesses will become incurable as the efficacy of current antibiotic drugs wanes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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The recent shortage of a crucial antiretroviral drug, Tenofovir, is but just a symptom of an underlying general problem of health management in South Africa. Part of this is the lack of oversight on drug supplies and availability by the national Health Department.
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The World Health Organisation has released a technical document focusing on the issues associated with skin-lightening creams thatcontain mercury. One in three woman in South Africa are reported to be using these products on a regular basis despite the fact that it could cause kidney damage among other side-effects.
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The continued stock out of the antiretroviral tenofovir and the failure to advise health workers on how to deal with it is a looming disaster, HIV Clinicians and activists are warning.
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SECTION27 released a statement detailing the financial crisis in the Eastern Cape health department which is threatening to collapse. It calls on the national health department to urgently intervene, reminding it that it has a duty to do so.
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OPINION: Lifesaving drugs under disputed patents could become more easily available in future depending on the outcome of a case before the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein on Tuesday.
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HIV activists and health workers are demanding an enquiry into continuing drug shortages, specifically a number of critical antiretrovirals that are central to government’s treatment programme.
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Activists have sent another letter to Cepheid, the manufacturer of the revolutionary GeneXpert multi-drug resistant TB diagnostic machine, urging them to bring down the price of their products so that more people can access this lifesaving test.
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JOHANNESBURG - Gauteng’s public health service has run out of essential lifesaving drugs and its laboratory services are about to collapse.
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The Department of Health recently published draft regulations and guidelines governing complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs). We have not done an exhaustive analysis of the proposed changes. We are posting preliminary observations to spur discussion and public engagement with these important documents. By Marcus Low.
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