Day: February 23, 2019

An independent advisory body convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends pregnant women and breastfeeding women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo be vaccinated against the deadly Ebola virus.  Latest WHO figures put the number of Ebola cases in the DRC at 853, including 521 deaths since the beginning of the outbreak in August.

More than 80,000 people so far have been vaccinated against Ebola in the African country’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces during the current outbreak.  The vaccine is still in its experimental stage. But since 2015 it has been given to thousands of people in Africa, Europe and the United States.  

The studies of the efficacy of the vaccine are not conclusive.  However, they indicate the serum is safe and protects people against Ebola.  On the basis of accumulated evidence, the group of immunization experts recommends continued ring vaccination for Ebola in DRC.

Ring vaccination is a strategy that prevents the spread of the disease by vaccinating only those likely to be infected with the virus.  WHO  spokesman, Tarek Jasarevic says the experts advise pregnant women at high risk of infection and death from Ebola should be given the vaccination.

“So, this aim, this vaccinating of women would protect them, provide them with more protection.  But we also know that if we use this ring vaccination that women who are in the community that is vaccinated then have a low risk.  So, it is really between risk and benefits and we hope that the use of the vaccine in pregnant women will generate some data for the future,” Jasarevic said.

The group of experts advise the vaccine be given to pregnant women in their second or third trimester as well as to breastfeeding women and babies under one year old.  

The experts also recommend that one or more of three other new experimental Ebola vaccines be tested in areas neighboring the affected regions.  They say pregnant and breastfeeding women should be included in these trials.

The WHO says all vaccinated pregnant women will be closely monitored until the birth of their babies to see if there are any adverse effects.

 
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Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft reached an altitude of more than 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) on Friday, carrying for the first time a passenger in addition to its two pilots.

SpaceShipTwo, built by British billionaire Richard Branson to carry tourists into space, launched from California’s Mojave desert and flew to an altitude of 55.87 miles (89.9 kms), the company said. 

The US definition of space is anything over an altitude of 50 miles. The Virgin craft made it past that for the first time in December, reaching an altitude of 50.9 miles.

Branson announced with great fanfare at the time that it was the first time since NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011 that an American vessel had carried humans into space.

However, the Virgin craft still has not crossed the internationally accepted boundary between Earth’s outer atmosphere and space, known as the Karman Line, which is set at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kms).  

“SpaceShipTwo, welcome back to space,” wrote Virgin Galactic as it Tweeted updates throughout the event, without sending out any live footage.

The spacecraft travelled at a speed of Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound in its ascent, and landed without incident at the Mojave spaceport.

It is designed to carry six passengers, but test flights are years behind schedule in large part because of an accident that killed a test pilot in 2014.

Branson told AFP earlier this month that he hoped the test flights would be far enough ahead by July that he would be able to join a flight.

For the first time Friday, the flight carried a passenger, Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses, who will be in charge of training the company’s future space tourists. 

To take off from the ground, SpaceShipTwo is carried by another larger plane, WhiteKnightTwo, which resembles a combination of two airplanes attached by their wing tips. 

When it is high enough, it releases the spaceship which then fires up its own rocket engine and ascends for roughly a minute into space.

At the apogee, its passengers float in zero-gravity for several minutes. It then descends and glides back to the landing strip.

Branson’s main rival is Blue Origin, created by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Bezos told an audience in New York this week that his New Shepard suborbital vehicle would start flying people later this year and to a greater altitude than SpaceShipTwo. 

“One of the issues that Virgin Galactic will have to address, eventually, is that they are not flying above the Karman Line, not yet,” Bezos said, quoted by Space News. 

New Shepard has already flown above the Karman Line, but not with people on board. 
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Two U.S. senators launched an investigation into rising insulin prices on Friday, sending letters to the three leading manufacturers seeking answers as to why the nearly 100-year-old drug’s cost has rapidly risen, causing patients and taxpayers to spend millions of dollars a year.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s top Democrat, sent letters to the heads of Eli Lilly and Co., Novo Nordisk A/S and Sanofi SA, the longtime leading manufacturers of insulin. 

The senators pointed to similar, large insulin price increases at all three companies. Eli Lilly’s Humalog, for instance, rose from $35 to $234 per dose between 2001 and 2015, a 585 percent increase, they wrote. Insulin has been available since the early 20th century. 

The senators asked for information on the process used to determine list prices and the process used to determine net prices after negotiations with pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) and health insurance plans. Their letters also asked for information about the cost of research and development, production, revenues and gross margins from insulin sales. 

“These hardships can lead to serious medical complications that are entirely preventable and completely unacceptable for the world’s wealthiest country,” the senators wrote in similarly worded letters. 

‘Increasingly severe hardships’

“We are concerned that the substantial increases in the price of insulin over the past several years will continue their upward drive and pose increasingly severe hardships not only on patients that require access to the drug in order to stay alive but also on the taxpayer,” they wrote. 

While Democratic lawmakers have launched several drug price investigations, this is one of the first bipartisan inquiries. 

The Senate Finance Committee has the power to subpoena drugmakers. 

The letters came just days before the same committee is scheduled to hold a hearing with seven pharmaceutical company executives, the latest congressional hearing on rising drug prices. 

U.S. lawmakers have intensified scrutiny on prescription medicine costs as the issue consistently polls as a top voter concern. In January, top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also wrote to the three insulin manufacturers asking for information on why their prices have rapidly risen. 

About 1.2 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, requiring daily insulin. Type 2 diabetes, which affects nearly 30 million Americans, according to the American Diabetes Association, is treated with a variety of other medicines. But those patients may also eventually become dependent on insulin. 
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