Kate Kelland Reuters 06/20/2010 The Access to Medicines Index (AMI) — released this week for the second time since its launch in 2008 — is produced by a Dutch-based foundation and backed by 22 institutional investors and fund managers, who together manage $3.1 trillion in assets. It put Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline at the top of its list of 20 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, ranked on the efforts to make sure medicines are made for, and reach, people in developing countries. The index is designed [...]

Robert Preidt Bloomberg Businessweek 06/20/2010 Children exposed early in life to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may have a reduced immune response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines, a new study indicates. The findings suggest that exposure to the environmental pollutants in the first years of life (a critical time in immune system development) could undermine the effectiveness of childhood vaccinations and possibly weaken immune system responses to infection, the Danish and U.S. researchers reported. They studied 587 children born between 1999 and 2001 on the Faroe Islands, [...]

NewsInferno 06/17/2010 The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has put off a decision on whether or not it should approve the expanded use of the Gardasil vaccine to older women, ages 27 to 45. The FDA’s decision, which was expected sometime next week, will not come until later this year. Approved in 2006, Gardasil prevents four strains of HPV, two of which cause 70 percent of all cervical cancers. The other two HPV strains are responsible for about 90 percent of genital warts. The vaccine [...]

SEO Press Releases 06/21/2010 Within the last month reports from two women’s organizations focused global attention on the silent epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) and their plans to provide accessibility to care. On June 8, health leaders at the WOMEN DELIVER conference in Washington D.C. called on the international community to commit resources to ensure women and girls have equal access to cervical cancer prevention technologies. A Declaration for Universal Access to Cervical Cancer Prevention was issued by leading women’s health, cancer and business [...]