The rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine has begun in Cameroon, which is said to usher in a “transformative chapter in Africa’s public health history”. The RTS,S vaccine – 662,000 doses of it – will be administered to children in the west African country, the first to be vaccinated after successful trials of the drug in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi between 2019 and 2021.
The city is working with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys medical debt in bulk from hospitals and debt collectors for pennies on the dollar. The group targets the debt of people with low incomes or financial hardships and then forgives the amounts. Under the program, the city will spend $18 million over three years.
A new study from Public Health Scotland has found that no cases of cervical cancer have been detected in young women who have been fully-vaccinated as part of the HPV immunization program, concluding that the vaccine was “highly effective” in preventing the development of the cancer. Scotland’s HPV vaccination program started in 2008 with girls offered the vaccine in their first year at secondary school.
The vaccine- developed by Dr. Thomas Wagner of U.S.-based Orbis Health Solutions – has already been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group.
Cape Verde, an island nation off the coast of West Africa, was given the status by the World Health Organization (WHO) as it has not reported a single case of local transmission in three years. Experts have hailed this as a major achievement. It’s the first time a sub-Saharan African nation has been declared malaria-free in 50 years.
A new law in Maryland requires Medicaid to cover “medically necessary” gender-affirming care for residents — including care well beyond hormones or surgery. The law went into effect on January 1. It requires coverage for “gender-affirming treatment in a nondiscriminatory manner.” Gender-affirming care is considered safe and essential to the well-being of trans people by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and other major U.S. and world health organizations.
Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore have developed an intranasal COVID-19 vaccine that enhances the immune system’s response to the virus, providing longer-lasting, greater protection than vaccine injections, even against new and emerging variants. The novel vaccine candidate could mean fewer boosters in future.
The team from U.S. biotech firm Novelna wrote: “At stage I (the earliest cancer stage) and at the specificity of 99%, our panels were able to identify 93% of cancers among males and 84% of cancers among females.” It believes its cheaper, less invasive multi-cancer screening test could be a ‘gamechanger.’
A new Polish national program plans to replace half the country’s 2.7 million wood and coal-fired furnaces with natural gas furnaces or even more efficient heat pumps by 2030. The policy is projected to save more than 21,000 lives a year in Poland, increase the number of people breathing clean air 15-fold, and help Poland reach new E.U. air quality standards.
For many years, research has focused on identifying novel therapies that stimulate beta-cell growth and function to restore insulin production in type 1 diabetics. Now, researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne have brought us a step closer to making this a reality, regenerating damaged pancreatic cells so they can produce insulin and functionally respond to blood glucose levels. The novel therapeutic approach has the potential to become the first disease-modifying treatment for type 1 diabetes.
