Thanks to Pap tests, fatal cervical cancers are almost unknown today in rich countries. But the disease kills an estimated 275,000 women a year in poor countries where Pap tests are impractical and the vaccine is far too expensive for the average woman to afford, so the price cut could lead to a significant advance in women’s health.

In an article published today on Reuters, Sabin Executive Vice President Dr. Ciro de Quadros and Tony Nelson of the ROTA Council describe how actions taken by Latin American countries to protect children from rotavirus, the leading cause of diarhea hospitalizations and deaths, could be used in other regions of the world severely impacted by this killer disease of children.

Joint release by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO, UNICEF, Rotary Internatonal and the US Centers for Disease Control annouces new pledges to gloabl polio eradication efforts.

 

Last May the World Health Assembly passed a ground-breaking resolution endorsing the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to achieve ambitious immunization goals, making this decade the “Decade of Vaccines.”