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  • African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) Meeting in Ghana The fifth annual international conference of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) will be held Nov. 9-11 in Accra, Ghana, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. The theme of this year's conference will be improving maternal, newborn, and child health in Africa, which will be discussed by top experts from around the world. ASADI V will kick off with the release of Science in Action: Saving the Lives of Africa's Mothers, Newborns, and Children, a new report by several African science academies, assessing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing maternal and childhood mortality -- the focus of U.N. Millennium Development Goals Four and Five -- in sub-Saharan Africa. The report will include estimates of lives that could be saved if proven scientific methods reached more parts of Africa. 11/9
  • Meeting HIV/AIDS Cost Demands: Is The Global Response Working? The November/December 2009 edition of Health Affairs focuses on key global health challenges – including the economic, political, scientific and ethical ones – facing world policymakers in their response to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Over the next several years, the world could face a funding shortfall that would prevent millions more with HIV/AIDS from gaining access to antiretroviral drugs. Yet over the long-term, the world could also take critical steps to slash the global burden of HIV-AIDS – and the costs of battling the pandemic – by half. 11/10
  • Meeting HIV/AIDS Cost Demands: Is The Global Response Working? The November/December 2009 edition of Health Affairs focuses on key global health challenges – including the economic, political, scientific and ethical ones – facing world policymakers in their response to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Over the next several years, the world could face a funding shortfall that would prevent millions more with HIV/AIDS from gaining access to antiretroviral drugs. Yet over the long-term, the world could also take critical steps to slash the global burden of HIV-AIDS – and the costs of battling the pandemic – by half. 11/10

WHO, Wyeth Launch Trial In Africa To Test New River Blindness Drug

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Thursday, July 02, 2009

The WHO on Wednesday announced plans for a clinical trial to test a new drug that "could halve the treatment period for river blindness [or onchocerciasis], a disease that threatens 100 million people mostly in Africa," AFP/Dow Jones Newswires/CNN Money reports (7/1). "This is a devastating illness that has plagued 30 African countries for centuries, in particular the populations in the most remote areas 'beyond the end of the road,'" Uche Amazigo, director of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), said (ANI/Thaindian.com, 7/1).

According to the WHO, fifteen hundred people from four sites in Ghana, Liberia and Congo will participate in the phase three trial to measure the effectiveness of the drug moxidectin over the next two and a half years, SciDev.net reports. River blindness is caused by the parasitic worm whose larvae are transmitted from person to person by blackflies. SciDev.net writes, "Adult worms can live in the body for up to 15 years, producing millions of larval worms that migrate through the skin and eyes – causing blindness" (Aguilar, 7/1).

"Moxidectin, now used to treat parasites in dogs, cats, horses and cattle, shows potential to destroy the worms that cause river blindness," Reuters reports. The pharmaceutical company Wyeth has reformulated the drug for human use (MacInnis, 7/1).

"Since moxidectin kills not only the larvae but also sterilizes or kills the adult worms, it has the potential to interrupt the disease transmission cycle within around six annual rounds of treatment," the WHO said in a written statement. This would be an improvement over the current drug used to fight river blindness, ivermectin, which is able to kills the parasitic worm larvae but not adult worms, requiring annual treatments for more than a decade for control of the disease (7/1).

In collaboration with Wyeth, the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR) will run the clinical trials. "WHO/TDR has been working with African investigators and institutions in the three countries since 2007 to ensure existing or new centres are capable of conducting the trials, and the hope is that this capacity building will enable further trials," SciDev.Net writes (7/1).

"Wyeth Pharmaceuticals vice president Henriette Ukwu said the company was providing the drugs free of charge for the trial and planned to seek regulatory approval for their wider distribution if it is successful," Reuters writes. "'There is no commercial interest for this product,' Ukwu stressed, saying the company would work to ensure those who need the treatment can access it through existing aid channels" (7/1).

The Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report is published by the Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2009 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.