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Fair Access

Independent reporting on the science, the innovations and the global health inequalities around vaccination

  • A middle-aged African woman in jeans and a red shirt sits on stairs looking at the camera

    ‘I wasn’t sure I’d make it’: how a new mother’s brush with TB could mean better treatment for pregnant women

    Fewer that 1.5% of drugs trials between 1960 and 2013 included expectant women. Now, campaigners and doctors are aiming to change that
  • A hygiene promoter raises awareness of mpox among displaced people near Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

    African health officials call for solidarity not travel bans over mpox outbreak

    Head of Africa CDC Jean Kaseya urges international community to support rollout of testing and vaccinations
  • A health worker collects a blood sample by pricking a patient's finger.

    What will a single-dose malaria drug mean for people in rural Brazil?

    The first malaria-endemic country to adopt tafenoquine hopes to eliminate the disease by 2035
  • Vaccines being unloaded at the airport in Pyongyang earlier this month.

    Vaccine doses for 600,000 children and pregnant women flown to North Korea

    Delivery of first medical aid since Covid raises hopes that country could open up again to UN and aid agencies
  • A middle-aged white women standing on a stage talking to an unseen audience

    Doctor behind trial of HIV prevention drug recounts breakthrough moment

    Prof Linda-Gail Bekker receives ovation at Aids summit after presenting trial results of ‘miracle’ drug lenacapavir
  • The sign outside the company HQ of Gilead

    HIV drug could be made for just $40 a year for every patient

    Generic version of a drug already on the market, which can suppress and prevent HIV, would still yield 30% profit if the current price was slashed, researchers say
  • People walk past a billboard with a message about ebola in Freetown, on November 7, 2014. West Africa's regional bloc on November 7 called for international help to go beyond immediate medical care for Ebola-hit nations, warning that lives had been blighted by the epidemic. AFP PHOTO/ FRANCISCO LEONGFRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images

    Global failure to prepare for pandemics ‘gambling with children’s future’

    Lessons from Ebola and Covid were not learned, say Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as they launch report calling for urgent action
  • A black man sits alone with his head bowed

    My embarrassing condition needs a simple operation – but in Nigeria few can afford it

    Michael Adebisi
    Gynecomastia – the benign growth of male breast tissue – is easily fixed but at a prohibitive cost for most Nigerians, leading many men to experience stigma and poor mental health
  • Montage of portraits of Festus Mogae, Gillian Anderson, Stephen Fry, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Alan Cumming

    Celebrities join campaigners in call for cheaper version of ‘gamechanger’ HIV drug for poorer countries

    Letter urges US company Gilead Sciences to ‘shape history’ by providing fair access
  • A doctor holds a patient's hand at a desk

    Cost of developing new drugs may be far lower than industry claims, trial reveals

    Exclusive: MSF calls for transparency after its bill for a trial of TB treatment came to a fraction of the billions claimed by pharmaceutical companies
  • A blood donation in Lodwar town, Turkana county.

    Kenya’s ‘blood desert’: can walking donor banks and drones help more patients survive?

    The national blood deficit is most pressing in places like Turkana, where malaria, anaemia and violence make heavy demands on transfusion services – and doctors are pinning their hopes on innovation
  • Tony-Jason, eight months, and his mother, Melissa, at home in Soa, near Yaoundé, Cameroon, with the mosquito nets in their bedroom.

    New types of mosquito bed nets could cut malaria risk by up to half, trial finds

    Changing the mixture of insecticide used in the netting has proved effective in fight against the disease that killed 600,000 in 2022
  • A patient is scanned by the portable X-ray machine in Philippines

    The suitcase-sized kit helping to rid the Philippines of one of history’s great killers

    Tuberculosis has plagued the world for thousands of years and remains a leading cause of death
  • A man in protective clothing pours some disinfectant into a bucket of water

    Cholera now threatens 1bn people. It’s time to finish what we began in the 19th century

    Hakainde Hichilema and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
    With the disease raging in 23 countries and no vaccine stocks, Zambia and the WHO propose a way to stop the deaths
  • Portrait of Cheri Nel with one of her dogs

    South Africans take on big pharma for access to ‘miracle’ cystic fibrosis drug

    Cheri Nel cannot afford Vertex’s Trikafta medicine, so she is suing to end ‘patent abuse’ and allow a generic version
  • People in hazmat suits at the Serum Institute India in Pune

    India gets its own HPV vaccine to stop 70,000 women dying of cervical cancer a year

    It has taken 18 years for India to produce its own affordable version to tackle the country’s second-biggest cause of cancer deaths among women
  • Soweto residents walk in front of an informative graffiti art work educating people about the dangers of the coronavirus.

    WTO fails to reach agreement on providing global access to Covid treatments

    Years of wrangling have ended in stalemate as campaigners question fairness of system for low and middle-income countries
  • IMG-100 At just 21, Jessie Mazumba is a foot soldier in Malawi’s battle against vaccine hesitancy and cervical cancer. Everyday, she knocks on the doors of girls aged nine to 18 living in the rural, hard to reach areas outside Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. Her goal is to promote the HPV vaccine and offer reliable health information.

    ‘I wish I’d had someone like me to talk to’: the mothers helping fight cervical cancer in Malawi

    The country has one of the world’s highest death rates from the disease but a campaign led by young mothers is ensuring girls have access to the HPV vaccine
  • A health worker wearing green scrubs stands to inject the arm of a seated woman.

    South Sudan flooding hampers efforts to contain hepatitis E outbreak

    MSF begins vaccine drive against incurable disease, which is spread via dirty water and kills thousands of pregnant women
  • Mexico security forces outside a house where a drug trafficking tunnel was discovered in 2022 that goes under the US-Mexico border between Tijuana, Mexico, and the San Diego area.

    Carriers sneak life-saving drugs over border as Mexico battles opioid deaths

    People forced to bring overdose-reversal drug naloxone from US, as critics accuse Mexican government of creating shortage
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