Hope In Health
Japanese encephalitis vaccine developed
A newly accessible vaccine against Japanese encephalitis is going to make the protection of more children in developing countries easier. The vaccine, manufactured in China, only needs to be given in one dose, it can be used for infants, and it is less expensive than other Japanese encephalitis vaccines.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently added the vaccine to its list of prequalified medicines, meaning that WHO has given the vaccine its stamp of approval in safety and efficacy terms.
Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne flavivirus infection is a severe disease that involves inflammation of the brain. The disease is preventable by proven effective vaccines.
Novo Nordisk to invest up to $3.7b on diabetes pills
The Danish company said it planned to spend the money through to 2020 on six diabetes pills it has under development and that the sum included potential production facilities, reports Reuters.
In the conventional treatment, insulin has to be injected to the patients, something that scares off many potential users in the early stages of diabetes. The challenge for the tablet technology is to get the insulin through gastric acid and into the bloodstream.
Novo Nordisk, the world's largest insulin producer, aims to develop both an insulin and a so-called GLP-1 agonist in tablet form. It will spend around 1 billion crowns on the projects this year, with investment increasing towards possible product launches early next decade.
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