FIND and WHO collaborate to improve diagnosis of sleeping sickness
The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and the World Health Organization (WHO), with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced that they will begin work on the development and evaluation of new diagnostic tests for sleeping sickness. Efforts will be focused on developing simple-to-use tools effective in the remote field conditions where the disease is most prevalent.
www.finddiagnostics.org

Behind the global numbers: Real cost of health research

An interesting Global Forum for Health Research report, Monitoring Financial Flows for Health Research 2005: Behind the global numbers, advocates a change in the persistent divergence between the use of research resources and the burden of disease affecting less developed countries.
www.globalforumhealth.org

WHO calls for an immediate halt to provision of single-drug artemisinin malaria pills
At the launch of the latest malaria guidelines, January 2006, the WHO called on pharmaceutical companies to immediately stop marketing single-drug artemisinin tablets and only market artemisinin combination therapies instead, to prevent malaria parasites from developing resistance to this drug 
www.who.int

Researchers produce artemisinin out of yeast

Artemisinin could become a whole lot cheaper as researchers, led by Jay Keasling (and sponsored by IOWH and Gates Foundation), were able to readily convert artemisinic acid (AA) out of yeast. This could have positive impact on lowering the cost of artemisinin combination therapies for malaria.
www.nature.com

Published by Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative - 1 Place St Gervais 1201 Geneva Switzerland
Editor: Jaya Banerji - Tel: +41 22 906 9230 - Fax: +41 22 906 9231 - www.dndi.org