Global Health Matters
The recent United Nations Summit on MDGs fueled the final push to achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals and focused attention on new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also caused me to revisit a 2011 report on improving access to drugs non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in developing countries and a report that ...
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Last May the WHO launched its Global Action Plan on Mental Health. This plan captures years of hard work and offers a clear road map to tackle a global health priority. Mental and neurological disorders—MNDs—go too often silent and yet exert a paramount toll on individuals, societies, and the economy. ...
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This week I am writing from New York where I am following UN meetings on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is an important milestone as the international community has its final chance to have a say about how well or bad the world has done to achieve the MDGs. ...
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Every day, fake medicines find their way into online and physical pharmacies, hospitals, and street markets. This plague knows no borders. In the best case scenario, fake medicines leave patients with no side-effects but also without a cure. In many other cases, however, they can kill people. For this reason, ...
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Mobile phones are the most rapidly adopted technology in the world: next year, there will be more mobile phones than human beings on this planet. For all of us who work in global health the question is how can we leverage the power of these billions of mobile phones to ...
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What do we really mean when we say “incremental innovation”? Are we really just talking about minor changes to already existing medicines? Looking at the many positive things that incremental innovation – a continuous, lengthy, step-by-step research process – has meant for patients, the answer is a clear NO. Incremental ...
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During the recent World Health Assembly, there was a lot of discussion on how to realize tangible progress against non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which today lead to more than 60% of deaths worldwide. WHO Member States nailed down a focused and solid global action plan that should guide them towards the ...
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Today we celebrate the World Intellectual Property Day to praise the invaluable contributions made by innovators across the globe. Since the dawn of time, mankind has applied innovation to solve problems and live better, healthier and more plentiful lives. Apart from human creativity and passion, IP has been one of ...
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Results from the UN Decade to Roll Back Malaria tell us global malaria deaths have been reduced by 38% and that 10 countries on the African continent—and most endemic countries in other regions—halved malaria cases and deaths. This means the lives of 1.1 million children under five years have been ...
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Incremental innovation is the term used for subsequent improvements made to a “first-in-class” medicine, but it is often incorrectly associated with prolonging the patent term for an existing medicine which is not the case. Indeed, once the patent exclusivity period of the existing “first-in-class” patent has expired, any firm, regardless ...
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Welcome to IFPMA’s Global Health Matters blog. We are launching this forum to foster exchange and dialog on health topics that matter to all of us. As you know, the issues and challenges that organizations and individuals in the global health community face daily are plentiful, complex, and ever-changing. We ...
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In this first Global Health Matters entry, I want to address an important and much-discussed topic on the global health agenda: WHO engagement with non-state actors. In the WHO context, “engagement” can have a variety of meanings and can spur different reactions. It may range from simple dialogue to cooperation, ...
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