CFR Launches Interactive Map Tracking Vaccine-Preventable Disease Outbreaks

October 24, 2011—While tremendous progress has been made to combat vaccine-preventable diseases, outbreaks continue to thwart eradication efforts. Measles still kills an estimated 164,000 people around the world each year—mostly children under five. One or more of the three strains of the polio virus have been reported in circulation in Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and China.

For the past three years, the Global Health program at the Council on Foreign Relations has been tracking relevant reports to produce an interactive map plotting global outbreaks of diseases that are easily prevented by inexpensive and effective vaccines. The diseases include measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, and rubella.

“These outbreaks illustrate a worrying trend and raise the sense of alarm regarding failures in and public resistance to vaccine efforts,” says CFR senior fellow for global health Laurie Garrett. “Small decreases in vaccine coverage are known to lead to dramatic increases in outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” she explains.

The map is searchable by region, year, and disease. Established media organizations and blogs are encouraged to embed the chart on their sites and to submit additional news reports of outbreaks and vaccine shortages.

The “Vaccine-Preventable Outbreaks Map” is available at: www.cfr.org/vaccinemap

The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.


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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

DNDi Joins WIPO Open Innovation Platform

Geneva, Switzerland, 26 October 2011 – The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) welcomes the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) initiative to create an open innovation platform – in the form of a searchable public database – to make intellectual property (IP), including compounds and regulatory data, for neglected disease innovation available for licensing. The initiative, called Re:Search, is being launched today in Geneva.

This initiative confirms a recent growing trend of openness in the management of IP for global health. After the Medicines Patent Pool for HIV launched by UNITAID and the Pool for Open Innovation for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) launched by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), WIPO Re:Search represents an additional move towards more open mechanisms that have the potential to facilitate and foster sharing of IP and knowledge for neglected disease innovation.

DNDi joins WIPO Re:Search as a Provider and likely User. It has committed to providing raw data to WIPO Re:Search, including information on development of drugs for leishmaniasis and human African trypanosomiasis, both of which are fatal parasitic diseases.

This mechanism has the potential to avoid duplication in research and to reduce costs and development timelines for the benefit of patients. However, while DNDi welcomes the initiative, it points to two elements considered essential to ensure innovation and access in neglected-disease endemic countries:

‘Firstly, WIPO and other important players engaged in global health should take a step further in terms of access, especially by including not only the least developed countries but all neglected disease-endemic countries’, said Dr Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director of DNDi. ‘Secondly, we need to aim for more transparency in licensing practices that have a public health goal. We have to go beyond the minimum,’ he added.

Since its inception, DNDi has advocated for open innovation. In practice, it brokers very ambitious and clear agreements to ensure equitable access in neglected disease-endemic countries with several pharmaceutical partners. DNDi will continue to negotiate for the best conditions for neglected patients and to promote more open innovation for neglected diseases.

Part of DNDi’s mission is to encourage and support follow-on research for neglected diseases by the research community. It will use WIPO Re:Search, in addition to other public databases, to share, as much as possible, research data generated in partnership with public and private partners.

About Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi)
DNDi is a not-for-profit research and development organization working to deliver new treatments for neglected diseases, in particular human African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, malaria, and, with the recent expansion of its portfolio, specific helminth infections and pediatric HIV. DNDi was established in 2003 by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation from Brazil, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, and the Pasteur Institute of France. The UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/World Health Organization’s Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) serves as a permanent observer.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

BBC’s Peter White and charity Sightsavers highlight the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness

This World Sight Day (13 October) the charity Sightsavers will pledge to raise £62 million to eliminate the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness, trachoma.

BBC Disability Affairs Correspondent and Radio 4 presenter, Peter White, will endorse the charity’s initiative by presenting his personal experience of its work in Kenya to guests including some of the UK’s most influential policy makers

Sightsavers has decided to carry out this unprecedented investment in order to eliminate trachoma from the 14 African and Asian countries where it is endemic, by 2020. To do this, the charity has pledged to raise an additional £6.25 million yearly to tackle trachoma for the next ten years. This is the biggest single investment Sightsavers has ever made to combat the disease.

Though eliminated in most developed countries, trachoma remains a significant threat in the developing world, affecting more than 84 million people. The disease of poverty mainly affects people who live in hot, dry and dusty areas where there is poor availability of water and sanitation. Triggered by bacteria, after years of repeated infection the inside of the eyelid may be scarred so severely that the eyelid turns inward and the lashes rub on the eyeball, scarring the front of the eye. If untreated this condition leads to blindness. It costs Sightsavers as little as £5 to carry out an operation to treat severe trachoma.

Peter White has witnessed first-hand the devastating effects that trachoma can have on people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest countries where Sightsavers works. Earlier this year, the BBC correspondent travelled to Africa to learn more about Sightsavers’ work to fight trachoma in the Marasabit region of Kenya, an area blighted by drought which is exacerbating disease levels.

Speaking about his experience in Kenya, Peter White said: “What struck me most was the scale of the problem Sightsavers face and the devastating effect sight loss has in an economy where everyone’s contribution is vital. For the first time it was explained to me that losing your sight as a herdsman, or running a home with many children, can be an economic disaster and it became clear to me that the work Sightsavers does can literally restore lives in a matter of minutes.”

Sightsavers’ ambitious ten-year plan will aim to:

–        Operate on one million trachoma patients by 2020

–        Expand antibiotic distribution to 84 million people

–        Ensure at least 80 percent of children aged between one and nine have clean faces by encouraging face washing

Commenting on the initiative, Simon Bush, Sightsavers Director for Advocacy and African Alliances, said: “Sightsavers knows there is an urgent need for global efforts to be increased if the goal of eliminating trachoma by 2020 is to be reached and, more importantly, if people are to be stopped from needlessly going blind. A massive backlog of patients require surgery – if we don’t act quickly they will be blinded by trachoma.”

At the event, entitled, ‘A SAFE solution: our plan to eliminate blinding trachoma’, Peter White is to address some of the UK’s most influential policy makers including the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
International Development, Stephen O'Brien; Sightsavers’ Chairman, Lord Nigel Crisp; and esteemed Professor Alan Fenwick OBE who has been pivotal in raising the issue of NTDs to the international community.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.