Global Health Policy

In Support of the Priority Review Voucher for Neglected Tropical Diseases

12/24/08

I'm tired of the Priority Review Voucher (PRV)-bashing. For those unaware of the PRV program, it is a new bipartisan incentive mechanism passed by Congress and signed into law in September of 2007. The legislation rewards the sponsor of a neglected tropical disease product with a tradable voucher upon its FDA approval. The voucher can then be used to obtain a priority (speedier) review for another product.

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A Proposed Ugandan Law Would Punish Those Who Hide Their Infection Status from Their Partners without Rewarding Those Who Reveal It

12/22/08

Mead Over

Former colleague Chris Blattman has just blogged a remarkable legal initiative under consideration in Uganda: the criminalization of "intentional" HIV transmission. "Intentional" transmission is defined as knowing that one is HIV-positive and failing to communicate that fact to one's sexual partner.

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Can the Overestimation of Vaccination Rates Be Better Explained?

12/19/08

Mead Over

My colleague Ruth Levine has recently posted on a new study by Stephen Lim and colleagues at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the discrepancies between vaccination rates from two sources: those obtained officially from governments and those estimated directly and unofficially from household surveys from the same countries.

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New Lancet Article about GAVI Shows Need for Improved Monitoring of Immunization Coverage

12/12/08

Ruth Levine

Tracking progress towards universal childhood immunizations and the impact of global initiatives, a study by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington published in the December 13 edition of the Lancet, concludes that estimates of immunization coverage in developing countries have been overstated, and that in recent years many countries seem to have inflate

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Unintended Consequences from Pushing for Sustainability of HIV/AIDS Programs

12/12/08

William Savedoff

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

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A WHO Committee is Negotiating with Drug Manufacturers in order to Improve Access to Medicines

12/10/08

Mead Over

"Igwg on Phiip" sounds like a rural Welsh village on the River Phiip, named to eulogize a local notable named Igwg. In fact, with a different capitalization, it's the cumbersome acronym for a working group that is attempting to improve the poor's access to pharmaceuticals while maintaining incentives for innovation.

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The NICE Approach to Rationing ART in PEPFAR Countries (Part II)

12/9/08

Mead Over

In my last blog, I suggested that under a specific condition a NICE approach, as outlined in the Gardiner Harris article in the NYT, could help to allocate expenditures between AIDS treatment, HIV prevention and care for affected persons. The condition is that there be no spillover effects, either positive or negative, between these categories of interventions.

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The Public versus Private Debate: Inching Toward the Middle . . .

12/9/08

April Harding

An exchange in the pages of PLoS Medicine underscores a promising trend in global health: a shift toward more pragmatism and less name-calling on the role of the private sector in developing country health systems.

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