💊 South Africa’s patent laws need reform; Moderna fails to shirk patent lawsuit; Prostate cancer may not need treatment

#295 | Brazil loses more forest; More malaria vaccines in Kenya are promised; South Koreans' work hours are longest

Hello again from us at The Kable. Did you have a good weekend?

Moderna sure didn’t, as it failed to shift the blame onto the US government in a patent lawsuit filed against it in relation to its Covid vaccines.

South Koreans didn't have a good weekend (or a weekend at all) as the government proposed increasing the legal cap on weekly work hours from 52 to 69 hours, all while countries elsewhere are moving to four-day work weeks. Surprised that South Korea has the lowest birth rate and one of the highest suicide rates in the world?

Zambia’s Pharmanova and Spain’s Medlab have signed an MOU to set up a $100 million pharmaceutical hub.

Guyana wants to fortify its healthcare services and potentially even produce vaccines in the Caribbean, for which it has reached out to India and Rwanda for assistance.

China doesn’t seem to have had its fill of lockdowns as the city of Xi’an, in an emergency response plan, says it may resort to lockdowns again to tackle severe flu outbreaks. Local residents are far from happy.

Over in Kenya, the Health Ministry is scaling up use of the four-dose malaria vaccine Mosquirix, over a million doses of which have already been administered to children in the country.

Meanwhile, in Malawi, the cholera outbreak is claiming it place as the largest in Africa.

And finally, experts are telling men with low- or intermediate-risk prostate cancer that they may not require treatment at all. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment come with their own complications. In fact, high levels of prostate-specific antigens (PSA) may not necessarily indicate cancer at all, so regular PSA tests are doing more harm than good. Classic case of what you don’t know can’t hurt you.