💊 Africa’s call for increased malaria investment; Africa’s regional AMR strategy; Kenya’s bid to move away from donor support

#417 | Rwanda wants to be a medical tourism hub; IMF wants climate resilience for Africa; The world wants safe dengue vaccines

Hello there. Welcome back to The Kable. For starters, as South Africa tries to manage the epidemics of HIV and TB better, the country is allowing pharmacists to prescribe drugs so as to improve access and reduce health expenses. Also, South Africa’s state clinics will likely be less overburdened because of this move.

Still, on the HIV front, Kenya expects to transition out of most donor support, like from Pepfar and the Global Fund, by 2027. Donors have agreed to keep purchasing ARVs and test kits for the country till 2030. In the meantime, the country has to find ways to start financing its own HIV-related activities.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Drug Authority and the Jordan FDA are mulling collaborating in the pharmaceutical sector. Such cooperation would include knowledge exchange and trade cooperation.

Israel’s Cybellum has joined Japan’s Medical Information Sharing and Analysis Centre, or M-ISAC Japan. This membership will allow Cybellum to participate in research projects on medical device cybersecurity.

XtalPi has announced the launch of a new facility in Shanghai. Set to be fully operational by the end of this quarter, the facility will initially serve drug discovery and pharma development projects. This will be XtalPi’s largest automation lab in China.

A Japan Health Ministry panel has agreed to approve GSK’s RSV shot for adults 60 years and older. If formal approval comes through, this would be the first RSV vaccine available in Japan. Pfizer also hopes for its RSV vaccine approval to come through in the country.

Neighbouring China is on a mission to eliminate bribery, embezzlement, and fraud across the country’s healthcare sector. At least 176 hospital bosses and several drug company chief executives have been detained in the past few weeks. The MSCI China Healthcare index is down almost 10% since late May. International investors and multinationals relying on the huge Chinese market have reason to be wary, at least in the short term.

Belarus is set to get a Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Plans include promoting a combination of TCM and modern medicine and localizing TCM products.

Taiho Pharmaceutical has entered an option and license agreement with Phost-in Therapeutics for a novel compound named PhOx430 to treat advanced solid tumours. The deal focuses on developing and marketing this and other compounds in certain Asian territories.

Immune Therapeutics and Immgenuity have inked a research collaboration agreement focusing on achieving remission in HIV patients using a combo of the two companies’ drugs.

Ginkgo Bioworks has inked a five-year AI partnership with Google Cloud. The goal is to use large language models in synthetic biology, training them on genomic and protein data.

Britain’s NHS is set to roll out a world-first cancer treatment injection. The subcutaneous injection for the immunotherapy Atezolizumab, or Tecentriq, takes about 7 minutes to administer, as compared to the 30-60 minutes that intravenous infusions take.

KC Pharmaceuticals is the latest eye drop manufacturer to receive a US FDA warning letter.

Sanofi, the Meningitis Research Foundation, and the Confederation of Meningitis Organisations have come together to launch The Meningitis Flag – a global initiative to raise awareness about the largely preventable infectious disease.

Wondering which companies are powering the global medical device industry? Medical Design & Outsourcing and MassDevice have you covered with their latest Medtech Big 100 report. It includes company leadership, annual revenue, R&D spending, and more.

As it strengthens its focus on its newly approved geographic atrophy (GA) drug Syfovre, Apellis Pharmaceuticals is laying off 25% of its workforce. It is also trimming its research spending.

And finally, more news of that pesky virus that we can’t seem to shake off. Researchers are reporting that SARS-CoV-2 viral variants evolve thrice as fast in white-tailed deer than in humans.