đŸ’‰ Sanofi goes big in India; GrĂ¼nenthal grows large in South America; Vaccines go missing in conflict zones
#526 | The days... they're getting longer; Malaria is getting more drug-resistant; Bird flu comes to Antarctica
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable. It has been raining kittens and puppies where we are for the past many days, which probably accounts for why this week's edition is on the light side.
We begin with several pieces of good, even great, news.
First up, the first human trials for the Marburg virus are finally here. Researchers at the University of Oxford are looking for 46 volunteers to receive doses of the ChAdOx1 Marburg vaccine.
In even better news, the second-ever malaria vaccine - the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, co-developed by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and the University of Oxford - has joined the family of routine immunisations with a launch in Côte d’Ivoire. South Sudan too has launched a rollout for the R21 vaccine.
In even better news, Côte d’Ivoire has announced that it will fully finance its routine immunisation programme over the next five years to ensure sustainability beyond Gavi support.
In continuing good news, Malawi announces that it is so over its cholera outbreak.
In what can only be called a vibe shift, more than 200 people have been hospitalised in Gombe, Nigeria with a mystery illness that has also claimed 11 lives.
Vietnam, which last year had authorised its home-grown vaccines for African swine fever, is nevertheless contending with a series of outbreaks of the illness, a spread that is now beginning to affect the economy too.
A bit of manufacturing news: Germany's GrĂ¼nenthal is investing $87 million to update its two manufacturing facilities in South America. In Santiago, Chile, the company will refurbish its plant to produce 1.8 billion tablets annually, aiming for European Medicines Agency (EMA) certification by November 2025. In Quito, Ecuador, the already EMA-certified plant will produce 300 million tablets annually starting in 2025, with both facilities manufacturing GrĂ¼nenthal’s medicines and providing contract services for clients.
Sanofi plans to invest $437 million over several years to expand its workforce at its global capacity centre in Hyderabad, India, starting with $109 million by next year. The facility, currently employing around 1,000 people, aims to grow to 2,600 employees in two years, making it the largest of Sanofi’s four global capacity hubs.
Speaking of India, the perennial romance between the US FDA and Indian drugmakers continues. In the latest episode, the agency has issued an 'official action indicated' classification to Zydus' unit in Gujarat, following an investigation in April.
Bird flu is still hogging the headlines. The number of humans confirmed infected in the US jumped from three to nine this week. According to the US CDC, another 16 symptomatic farm workers were tested, bringing the total number of symptomatic humans to 69. Test results were still pending but 150 people were reported to have received antiviral medication. Bird flu has also been detected in cows in a new dairy herd in Oklahoma. Experts worry that chicken culling and disposal make it more likely humans will catch the bug. Elsewhere, Spanish researchers in Antarctica find bird flu in a marine mammal for the first time on the continent.
In Gujarat, India, an outbreak of Chandipura virus has resulted in 15 deaths so far.
Hey, what is this? The International Olympics Committee is running courses on respiratory care for athletes. Almost as if there might be a respiratory virus in circulation around the world, no?
And finally, in a return to good news, a seventh person is now reportedly cured of HIV. We may yet cure this scourge before climate change takes us all.
Stories Of The Week
Put vaccines, not weapons in arms. Conflicts across the globe disrupted vaccination efforts, leaving 14.5 million children without critical vaccines for diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough in 2023, up from 13.9 million in 2022, according to the UN. This number, although lower than during the first couple of years of the pandemic, remains significant, with an additional 6.5 million children not fully protected. War-torn regions like Sudan saw a drastic drop in vaccination coverage, with only 57% of infants vaccinated in 2023. Countries like Yemen and Afghanistan also joined the list of those with the most unvaccinated children. Despite these challenges, there were improvements in some areas, such as a reduction of "zero-dose" children in Africa and increased HPV vaccine coverage globally, with Ukraine also seeing better vaccination rates amid its conflict with Russia.
(UN)
The malaria mutation. The good news about recent rollouts of a malaria vaccine notwithstanding, scientists warn that millions of lives are at risk unless urgent action is taken to halt the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa. Malaria parasites resistant to the critical drug artemisinin are now prevalent in East Africa, with resistance levels soaring from under 1% to over 20% in just three years. This resistance has led to increased malaria deaths in the past too. In a paper published in Science, the researchers recommended adding a third drug to artemisinin treatments, expanding insecticide-treated bed nets, using long-acting insecticides, targeting malaria vaccines to all ages in affected areas, supporting community health workers, and improving data sharing on resistance while also calling for increased funding from global health initiatives to combat this growing threat.
(Science)
Bottom line
Welcome to 12-hour workdays. Thank you, climate change. The mass melting of polar ice is lengthening the Earth's days by milliseconds, potentially disrupting internet traffic, financial transactions, and GPS navigation, all reliant on precise timekeeping. This change, caused by human-induced global heating, is redistributing water from ice sheets to oceans, making Earth more oblate and slowing its rotation. This human impact on the Earth's system, altering processes that have existed for billions of years, highlights the significant influence of carbon emissions. Researchers warn that without emission cuts, this rate will increase, overtaking natural factors like lunar tides in altering day length.
(PNAS)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn't want you to see this.
Thank you