Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune profiled a controversial clause of U.S. immigration law that bans admission by foreign nationals who have HIV or AIDS. In 1987, the height of the AIDS scare in this country, HIV was added to the list of "communicable diseases of public health significance," and therefore deemed sufficient grounds for denying entry under the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, writing in today's Libération (a sister paper of the FT, published in French), discuss the prospects for an agreement at this weekend's G8 meeting on proposals for an Advance Market Commitment for new vaccines and for an airline solidarity tax.
Here is an unofficial translation from French of the article's conclusion:
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bill Clinton is on his way to joining Bill Gates as a global health powerhouse. The two men are currently traveling together in Africa and will jointly address both the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto next month and the Clinton Global Initiative in September.
Epidemiologists at UC Berkeley have found evidence that children exposed to DDT in utero face an increased risk of mental and physical developmental delays.
Poor countries have long claimed that their people suffer needless sickness and death because the price of medicines is too high. They are right. But often part of the fault lies in their own policies, which jack up prices by taxing medicines, raw materials for drugs and medical devices.
The Senate has passed a bill that would permit greater drug reimportation from Canada.
It's no secret that AIDS is a major problem on the African continent, but a series of cartograms designed by a University of Michigan Professor provides an effective visual demonstration of this problem by converting topographic areas into statistical proportions.
On Friday, Spain approved a $240 million donation to GAVI's International Finance Facility for Immunization. Other IFFIm donors include France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa.
IFFIm Overview (from Vaccines for Development):
The Consumer Project on Technology has a new blog on drug development and access.
The New York Times today detailed the FDA's recent tentative approval of a generic 3-in-1 combination anti-retrovival drug made by the Indian manufacturer Aurobindo Pharma. This decision follows on the heels of another approval last week (that one for a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Epivir ARV) and opens the door for the purchase and use of the drugs in PEPFAR-supported programs in developing countries.
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