News from Sabin
New Sources of Funding Needed to Control and Eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases
September 2, 2010
An editorial published by Sabin President Dr. Peter Hotez today in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Neglected Tropical Diseases, calls on the G8, Gulf Cooperation Council nations, and neglected tropical disease (NTDs) endemic countries, such as Nigeria and Indonesia, to fund global NTD control efforts.
Despite a growing awareness of NTDs as both a global health and security threat, the burden of funding has been primarily shouldered by three nations—the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan, states Dr. Hotez in the editorial “Neglected Tropical Disease Control in the “Post-American World.”
Global Health Dignitaries Conclude Smallpox Eradication Symposium with Recommendations for Advancing Disease Eradication
August 27, 2010
Over 260 scientists, public health workers, historians and other professionals from 34 countries successfully closed the “Smallpox Eradication after 30 Years: Lessons, Legacies and Innovations” symposium today with a statement of recommendations to the global health community and general public.
In the statement, participants observe that smallpox eradication removed from humanity a disease which killed an estimated 300 million individuals in the twentieth century alone. The global smallpox eradication program also led to several advancements including the expansion of national vaccination programs, use of epidemiological surveillance as a key tool in disease control, and, most significantly, great progress toward the global eradication of polio and Guinea Worm and the elimination of measles and rubella from the Americas.
Smallpox Eradication Taught Us How to Fight Polio: Now We Need to Win the Battle
August 27, 2010
Dr. Tadataka Tachi Yamada, President of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is a featured speaker at the 2010 smallpox eradication symposium being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from August 24-27. Below, he details how the lessons learned from smallpox eradication can be applied to the elimination of polio.
When I was growing up in Japan, my close friend Keichi Maruyama, who lived right next door to me, was crippled from polio.
Most people today are too young to remember, but it was a disease that struck fear into every family. We knew it could hit home at any time.
Lancet Article Highlights Devastating Lack of Treatment for Neglected Tropical Disease in Africa
August 13, 2010
In an editorial in the August 13 edition of The Lancet, authors representing the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Imperial College of London call for increased supplies of praziquantel for the African continent.
Praziquantel is the only commercially available treatment for human schistosomiasis, a devastating neglected tropical disease (NTD) that affects an estimated 200-600 million people worldwide with the vast majority of cases occuring in Africa. Schistosomiasis can cause chronic anemia and inflammation associated with severe disability among children, adolescents and young adults, and the disease burden could exceed that of malaria.
NTDs are devastating, disabling and debilitating parasitic and bacterial infections that adversely affect the poorest 1.4 billion people worldwide living on $1.25 a day.
9th International Rotavirus Symposium Call to Action
August 9, 2010
Johannesburg, South Africa
2 – 3 August, 2010
Considering that:
- Diarrhea is the second greatest killer of children under five worldwide, killing 1.33 million children under five each year;
- Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrheal disease;
- Rotavirus-related diarrheal disease takes the lives of more than 500,000 children under five every year and is responsible for the hospitalization of millions more around the world;
- 85% of rotavirus deaths occur in low income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia;
New Bill Could Impact Surveillance and Treatment of Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States
July 30, 2010
United States Representative Hank Johnson, Jr. introduced a bill before Congress today that will target the elimination of neglected infections of poverty (NIOPs) in the US. The “Neglected Infections of Impoverished Americans Act of 2010” or H.R. 5986, would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to report to Congress annually on the impact of NIOPs, their threat and to make funding recommendations on how to eradicate them.
Sabin Vaccine Development Study Demonstrates How Educational Tools Increase Informed Participation in Clinical Trials
July 20, 2010
Tailored educational tools can improve knowledge and comprehension of potential clinical trial participants in resource-poor populations and thus increase the likelihood of obtaining truly informed consent for participation in clinical research say the authors of a manuscript, “Health Education through Analogies: Preparation of a Community for Clinical Trials of a Vaccine against Hookworm in an Endemic Area of Brazil,” published—along with a nine-part video series—in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases today.
Gulf Coast must remain vigilant for new health threat
July 19, 2010
The Houston Chronicle published an op-ed yesterday, co-written by Sabin President Dr. Peter Hotez and American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) President Ed Ryan, calling attention to the potential widespread re-emergence of dengue fever and its dreaded complication, dengue hemorrhagic fever, in the Gulf Coast of the United States.
“Given the previous disasters in the Gulf region, including hurricanes and an oil spill, one would like to believe that by now the U.S. government has been deeply sensitized to the plight of poor people living in the coastal areas of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. For instance, it would make sense for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the CDC - to increase its dengue surveillance efforts along the Gulf Coast, and possibly conduct additional studies to detect other diseases transmitted by insect vectors.
Sabin Executive Vice President Dr. Ciro de Quadros to Receive Charles IV Prize From Spain’s Royal National Academy of Medicine
July 14, 2010
Spain’s Royal National Academy of Medicine (RANM) announced on July 12 that Sabin Executive Vice President Dr. Ciro de Quadros will receive the Charles IV Prize for Research in Preventive Medicine and Public Health during a ceremony to be held later this year.
The Charles IV Prize is awarded to an individual who has helped promote the development and promotion of activities related to improving public health and progress of biomedical research. The award was created in honor of the early nineteenth century monarch of Spain who promoted a number of actions to develop public health throughout the Spanish empire including commissioning the Spanish physician, Dr. Francisco Javier de Balmis, to tour the world and vaccinate children in all of the Spanish colonies with a smallpox vaccine.
Vaccines Over Missiles
July 12, 2010
In a new op-ed published by the Ottawa Citizen today, Sabin President Dr. Peter Hotez urges the world's nuclear weapons states--where high rates of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and roughly one-third of the world's parasitic worm infections occur--to "redirect scientists who work in poor countries to peacetime pursuits."
"Most North Americans and Russians are unaware that, 50 years ago, nations on both sides of the Cold War co-operated on a back channel scientific research and development effort that led to the joint development of the oral polio vaccine. Today that vaccine has become the major instrument for global polio eradication efforts.
The fact that the U.S. and Soviet Union could put aside their ideological differences shortly after the Sputnik launch at the height of the Cold War for purposes of scientific co-operation and vaccine development, suggests that India, Pakistan, and China, not to mention Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, and Syria, could do the same for neglected tropical disease vaccines."
Continue reading "Vaccines over missiles" here.
Sabin Vaccine Institute Applauds Meningitis Vaccine Development
July 9, 2010
Innovative Product Development Partnership Generates Meningococcal Meningitis Conjugate Vaccine
The Sabin Vaccine Institute applauds the Meningitis Vaccine Project (a partnership between the World Health Organization and PATH) and the Serum Institute of India who announced last week that a new meningococcal A conjugate vaccine, MenAfriVac™, has been approved by the WHO and will be manufactured later this year at a remarkably low-cost of $0.40 per dose.
Meningococcal meningitis, a preventable infection which is often disabling and potentially fatal, disproportionately occurs in a wide swath of Africa known as the meningitis belt —from Senegal and the Gambia in the East to Ethiopia in the West—where 430 million people are at risk of infection.
PACE Applauds the Adoption of the World Health Assembly Resolution Prioritizing the Prevention and Treatment of Pneumonia
May 21, 2010
Important milestone signals progress in the fight against the world’s leading killer of children
On the heels of the release of new data that confirms pneumonia remains the world’s leading killer of children, the World Health Assembly passed an important and timely resolution today to prioritize the prevention and treatment of this devastating disease. The Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts (PACE), applauds this commitment by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its member states as an important step forward in the fight for child survival.
New Ways to Tackle Neglected Tropical Diseases are Debated
May 18, 2010
A debate published today in PLoS Medicine examines new approaches to tackling neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), with three viewpoints from experts in the field—including Sabin President Dr. Peter Hotez—arguing which approach shows the most promise.
Parasites in Paradise
May 17, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA has started an ambitious global health initiative that will deliver urgently needed medicine and preventative care to hundreds of millions of people in poor countries. Included in the plan are efforts to devote resources to “neglected tropical diseases,” afflictions like hookworm infections, river blindness and elephantiasis that many think have gone the way of smallpox, but which still make up the most common ailments among the world’s bottom billion.
When we talk about these diseases, we tend to think of distant places like West Africa and South Asia. As we develop the plan, however, it’s crucial that we remember that they plague communities much closer to home as well.
Just off the beautiful beaches of the Caribbean islands popular with American vacationers live millions who suffer from neglected tropical diseases.
Balmis Vaccine Institute and College of Physicians of Almería Honor Sabin Executive Vice-President Dr. Ciro de Quadros
April 30, 2010
Sabin Executive Vice-President Dr. Ciro de Quadros received two distinguished awards—the Distinción Balmis and the Gold Shield—during the VII Conference on Vaccine Update, organized by the Balmis Vaccine Institute, held in Almería, Spain from April 28-30, 2010.
Dr. de Quadros received the Gold Shield from the College of Physicians of Almería, and the Distinción Balmis from the Balmis Vaccine Institute, of Almería, Spain, for his dedication and contribution to the eradication of communicable diseases worldwide. In particular, the Distinción Balmis attempts to distinguish the work of humanitarian aid and international cooperation in the field of vaccines.
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