Sudan

Hikma welcomed a strong and profitable 2023, driven by the nourishing effects of its authorized generic Xyrem product, which will fall back this year as the rate of royalties owed to the brand’s innovator climbs. But the company is optimistic it can continue growth in 2024, including through its $1.2bn Injectables division, which rushed in to fill supply gaps last year.

The WTO Council's recent decision permitting least-developed country (LDC) members a 17-year exemption from implementing intellectual property (IP) provisions, such as patents, on medicines is expected to give Bangladesh's up-and-coming pharm industry valuable buffer time to catch up with and possibly take on some peers in the region.

The FDA plans to convene its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on 12 May to provide advice and recommendations about the development and licensure of vaccines against Ebola, which has infected about 24,600 people during the current outbreak, killing over 10,100.

The US has spent more than $5bn in trying to fight Ebola in West Africa – a disease with no cure, no approved vaccine and one that had some Americans in a frenzy this past fall when the virus first arrived on the nation's shores.

Producing a safe and effective Ebola vaccine as quickly as possible is "absolutely not an economic objective" for the biopharmaceutical industry at the moment, said Johnson & Johnson's Dr Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer and worldwide chairman of pharmaceuticals, whose company just invested another $200m to speed production of its prime-boost shot, which the firm's Crucell unit is developing with Bavarian Nordic (BN) and the US government.

There's nothing like a crisis to get things rolling in a direction they need to be moving, and the ongoing outbreak in West Africa of Ebola, which has infected 3,069 people, killing 1,552, is nothing short of a disaster for Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone – pushing those nations further into chaos and economic ruin.

If the charitable organization The Carter Center had to depend on the US government to furnish the antibiotics needed to treat trachoma, an infectious eye disease that is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the developing world, the medicines would never make their way to patients, said former President Jimmy Carter.

India's Zydus Cadila and the Seattle, US-based non-profit health organization, Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), are to collaborate to develop IDRI's visceral leishmaniasis (VL) vaccine candidate.

Cipla has expressed reservations over certain key components of licensing terms with the Medicines Patent Pool, which recently signed its first licence agreement with Gilead Sciences for five products for the treatment of HIV and hepatitis B.

ViiV Healthcare, the specialist HIV joint venture formed by GlaxoSmithKline (which owns 85%) and Pfizer (15%) in late 2009, and the Medicines Patent Pool appear to have made considerable progress in their negotiations towards a potential licensing pact for ViiV's products.

Beximco Pharmaceuticals of Bangladesh has reported a 28% increase in net sales to Bangladesh Taka (BDT) 2,969 million (£27.3 million) for the six months ended 30 June, buoyed by all-round growth. Profit before tax increased by 83% to BDT697.3 million (£6.4 million).

The treatment of rare diseases in Europe has been significantly enhanced by the EU's Orphan Drug Regulation and by raised levels of public awareness, thanks largely to the activities of interest groups with regard to the existence and prevalence of such diseases. As a result, research into drugs aimed at treating rare diseases is thriving and the EU is committed to maintaining high levels of R&D through support mechanisms, such as the 7th Framework Programme.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals is in a position to carry out acquisitions worth up to $400 million in total this year, CEO Said Darwazah has told Scrip. "In 2009 we were actively engaged with certain companies and we should see those talks come to fruition this year," he added.

Southern Sudan is struggling with an visceral leishmaniasis "epidemic", with cases in the country continuing to rise, humanitarian new agency IRIN reports.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria has issued its second largest ever overall approval of grants of $2.4 billion, its ninth round of grants to date.

A Phase I trial has started in Sudan to test a therapeutic vaccine against post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL), a complication of the visceral form of the parasitic disease. Leishmaniasis is found in parts of the tropics, subtropics and southern Europe, with Sudan having the highest number of PKDL cases in the world.

Cellestis of Australia has appointed Moscow-based Biochemmack to distribute its tuberculosis blood test QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT) in Russia.

Paediatric infectious disease control in Sudan has received a $5.6 million boost, following an agreement between the Government of Japan and UNICEF.

The use of treatments to tackle the early symptoms of malaria and pneumonia in developing countries has received a Cdn$20 million ($17.8 million) boost from the Canadian government.

The health of children in Sudan has been put at risk with the suspension of 16 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from working in the country, the UN's children's fund UNICEF has warned.