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Inovio SynCon avian influenza vaccine demonstrates broad coverage

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that its SynCon avian influenza vaccine generated protective HAI titers against six different unmatched strains of H5N1 in a phase I clinical trial - a distinct clinical achievement on Inovio's path to develop universal influenza vaccines.

17 May 2012

IMC to support government of Chad in polio eradication activities

International Medical Corps will immediately scale up its support to the government of Chad in polio eradication activities through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

17 May 2012

U.N., international community should pledge to improve water, sanitation in Haiti to mitigate cholera epidemic

"The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which began in late 2010, is bad and getting worse, for reasons that are well understood and that the aid community has done far too little to resolve," a New York Times editorial states, adding that the "Pan American Health Organization has said the disease could strike 200,000 to 250,000 people this year" and "has already killed more than 7,000."

15 May 2012

JHSPH wins GCE grant for global health and development research project

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Alain Labrique, PhD, director of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "mTIKKA - Harnessing a Mobile - Cloud System to Achieve Universal Vaccination."

14 May 2012

Efforts to stem childhood mortality in Ghana will not be enough to reach MDG, UNICEF official says

Anirban Chatterjee, chief of health and nutrition for UNICEF in Ghana, said the country "is doing a lot" to fight child mortality -- referring to a recently launched vaccination campaign and an initiative to educate mothers about nutrition -- but "I don't think it's enough" to reach the fourth U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015, Inter Press Service reports.

11 May 2012

Hospital midwife inadvertently spreads whooping cough to up to 170 people

A Middlemore Hospital midwife could have infected up to 170 people with whooping cough. If passed onto babies or women in the last three months of pregnancy, the disease can lead to severe illness or even death. Whooping cough is a highly infectious disease caused by bacteria which is easily spread through coughing and sneezing, much like the common cold. Also known as pertussis, it is distinguishable by a “whooping” sound at the end of coughing attacks.

10 May 2012

New approach to advance quality of pregnancy monitoring

The University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bioengineering Professor Todd Coleman, in collaboration with Materials Science and Engineering Professor John A. Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "Epidermal Electronics for Continuous Pregnancy Monitoring."

10 May 2012

Georgia Tech project to design new warehousing and storage system for vaccines, drugs

The Georgia Institute of Technology has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The program funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how persistent global health and development challenges are solved.

10 May 2012

Report identifies challenges, solutions to increasing routine vaccination in Nigeria

In this post in PSI's "Healthy Lives" blog, Deputy Editor Tom Murphy examines routine vaccination solutions in Nigeria, where "the Decade of Vaccines Economics projects 90 percent vaccine coverage against Hib, pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, measles and pertussis can save 600,000 lives and $17 billion in Nigeria over the next 10 years."

10 May 2012

Researchers use clever screening methods to speed vaccine production

Infectious diseases-both old and new-continue to exact a devastating toll, causing some 13 million fatalities per year around the world. Vaccines remain the best line of defense against deadly pathogens and now Kathryn Sykes and Stephen Johnston, researchers at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, along with co-author Michael McGuire from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are using clever functional screening methods to attempt to speed new vaccines into production that are both safer and more potent.

10 May 2012