💊 WHO updates Essential Medicines List; Misinformation threatens malaria vaccine uptake in Africa; Moderna, Merck recruit for phase 3 cancer vaccine trial

#393 | Allergies beget allergies; Covid begets brain fog; Fresh food can beget diseases

Hello there. Welcome back to The Kable. Does the Africa story interest you? Of course, it does – you read The Kable. The African Development Bank is launching its report on the Central Africa Economic Outlook 2023 on Monday. You might want to tune in.

Misinformation did its fair share of damage when it came to Covid vaccines. And that damage may spill over to other immunisation programmes as well. Now that Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF have announced the allocation of 18 million doses of malaria vaccines for 12 African countries between 2023 and 2025, researchers are concerned that malaria vaccine acceptance rates may not be high enough. This comment in The Lancet Infectious Diseases assesses the challenges to malaria vaccine rollout in Africa and the measures to ensure greater uptake.

In Uganda, the Ministry of Health has confirmed a cholera outbreak. Cases have been reported from the districts of Kayunga and Namayingo.

A report by Strategy& Middle East states that Saudi Arabia is poised to develop a leading biotech cluster in the coming decade. Since 2021, investments in Saudi Arabia’s biotech sector have totalled $3.9 billion.

Products from Bangladesh’s pharma industry are now reaching 131 countries across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas, Australia and Africa. Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the USA are the top importers of Bangladeshi health products.

In 2022, dengue claimed 281 lives in Bangladesh, which was a record high since 2000, when authorities started keeping count. This monsoon season, again, Bangladesh is witnessing the rapid spread of dengue. 201 lives have already been lost, raising fears that this year might break 2022’s record.

And now for some token representation of Big Pharma, Moderna and Merck have started enrolling patients in the phase 3 study of their personalised mRNA-based melanoma vaccine. Over 1,000 patients from over 25 countries are likely to be recruited.

AbbVie and Calibr have expanded their strategic collaboration to advance preclinical and early-stage clinical assets in immunology, oncology, neuroscience and more.

And finally, you might as well just give up the desire to get a shot of one of the fancy new weight loss drugs on the market. The latest issue to surface is the repeated breach of sterile-safety rules at the Catalent factory which fills the injection pens.