The African Development Bank’s Board of Directors has approved the establishment of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, a new groundbreaking institution that will significantly enhance Africa’s access to the technologies that underpin the manufacture of medicines, vaccines, and other pharmaceutical products.
African Development Bank Group President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said: “This is a great development for Africa. Africa must have a health defense system, which must include three major areas: revamping Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, building Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity, and building Africa’s quality healthcare infrastructure.”
During the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in February 2022, the continent’s leaders called on the African Development Bank to facilitate the establishment of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation. Adesina, who presented the case for the institution to the African Union said: “Africa can no longer outsource the healthcare security of its 1.3 billion citizens to the benevolence of others.” With this bold initiative, the African Development Bank has made good on that commitment.
AfDB Board approves establishment of African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation
Novartis announces $250 million to the fight against NTDs
Novartis endorses the Kigali Declaration on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and announces a five-year financial commitment of USD 250 million to the fight against NTDs and malaria in conjunction with the Kigali Summit on Malaria and
NTDs alongside the 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting. This summit comes at a pivotal time for world leaders to reaffirm commitments to end neglected tropical diseases and malaria through the adoption of the Kigali Declaration. The declaration aims to mobilize political will and secure commitments to achieve the SDG3 target on NTDs and to deliver the targets set out in the World Health Organization’s Neglected Tropical Disease Roadmap (2021-2030).
“Over the past decade, great progress has been made against NTDs, but there is still a lot more work to be done. Novartis will continue progressing our longstanding commitment to helping realize a world free of NTDs,” said Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis.
50,000 wild species meet needs of billions worldwide
Billions of people, in developed and developing nations, benefit daily from the use of wild species for food, energy, materials, medicine, recreation, inspiration and many other vital contributions to human well-being. The accelerating global biodiversity crisis, with a million species of plants and animals facing extinction, threatens these contributions to people. A new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae around the world. Sustainable use is when biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are maintained while contributing to human well-being.
The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species is the result of four years of work by 85 leading experts from the natural and social sciences, and holders of indigenous and local knowledge, as well as 200 contributing authors, drawing on more than 6,200 sources. The summary of the Report was approved this week by representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES in Bonn, Germany.
To end Tuberculosis by 2030 invest in stopping the world’s oldest airborne pandemic
The Stop TB Partnership unveiled a costed plan for the world to end tuberculosis (TB), the second leading infectious disease killer in the world, after COVID-19. The Global Plan to End TB 2023-2030 (‘Global Plan’) outlines the priority actions and estimated financial resources needed to end TB as a global health threat by 2030. It also lays out how, from now up to 2030, a global investment of US$250 billion could save millions of lives through early diagnosis and treatment of 50 million people with TB; the development, approval and distribution of a new TB vaccine; and the redoubling of efforts so that emerging crises like the COVID-19 pandemic or conflicts, like the ongoing war in Ukraine, do not derail TB programs.
The total amount of funding needed to support the Global Plan’s ambitions is the equivalent of every person in the world donating US$4 per year for the next seven years. The economic return on this investment would amount to US$40 for every US$1 invested and as much as US$59 for every US$1 invested in low- and lower middle-income countries. If, instead, the status quo is maintained, TB is expected to continue to kill between 4,000-5,000 people every day, an additional 43 million people will develop TB and the cost in human life and disability would translate to a global economic loss of US$ 1 trillion.
