Six In The Morning Sunday September 7

Ebola outbreak: Why has 'Big Pharma' failed deadly virus' victims?

Because, says a leading scientist, there was 'no business case' for a vaccine

CHARLIE COOPER 

 

 

Sunday 07 September 2014

The scientist leading Britain's response to the Ebola pandemic has launched a devastating attack on "Big Pharma", accusing drugs giants including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi, Merck and Pfizer of failing to manufacture a vaccine, not because it was impossible, but because there was "no business case".

West Africa's Ebola outbreak, which has now claimed well over 2,000 lives, could have been "nipped in the bud", if a vaccine had been developed and stockpiled sooner – a feat that would likely have been "do-able", said Professor Adrian Hill of Oxford University.

A team led by Professor Hill is to begin trials of an experimental Ebola vaccine fast-tracked into development in a desperate bid to slow the spread of the virus in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. If it passes safety and effectiveness trials, 10,000 doses of the vaccine – co-developed by the Britain's GSK and America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) – could be used to protect health workers in West Africa by December.

How will robotic surgery help Indians failed by basic healthcare in the country?

Be it life expectancy or infant mortality, Indian healthcare ranks way below that in other BRICs nations like China and Brazil, but even Bangladesh. And yet India is a pioneer in robotic surgery.

Many of India's billion-plus people struggle with a public healthcare system that is overburdened in cities and virtually nonexistent in villages.

Be it life expectancy, or infant mortality, Indian healthcare ranks way below many other countries, such as China, Brazil, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh.

Many people are unable to access - or cannot afford - modern healthcare services.

So it's perhaps ironic that at the other end of the spectrum robotic surgery is gaining popularity in India, and has even broken new ground.

Resentment simmering inside Liberia's 'Ebola jail town'

Sapa-AFP | 07 September, 2014 10:27

Trapped since officials placed them in quarantine two weeks ago, the residents of Dolo Town are becoming increasingly resentful over their incarceration in Liberia's open "Ebola jail".

Around 17,000 increasingly hungry residents in the settlement, close to the international airport, are forced to queue for rations of rice while soldiers blockade them in at gunpoint.

The usually-packed streets are almost empty, as residents observe quarantine measures in a bid to halt a particularly severe outbreak of a virus which has killed 2,000 west Africans, half of them in Liberia.

Dolo Town, 75 kilometres (47 miles) east of Monrovia, was placed in lockdown on August 20 at the same time as West Point, a slum in the capital.

Qatar confirms arrest of UK rights workers

Qatar says it arrested Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev last week for "violating the law of the land". Last updated: 07 Sep 2014 04:25

Qatar has confirmed it is holding two British human rights workers in Doha who had gone missing a week ago while investigating the conditions of Nepalese migrant labourers.

Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev, who worked for the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), disappeared after complaining of harassment by the police.

A statement on Saturday by Qatar's ministry of foreign affairs said the men were being investigated for "violating the law of the land" and that security forces had treated the men in accordance with international human rights law.

British consular officials had visited Upadhyaya and Gundev and checked on their well being, the statement added.

7 September 2014 Last updated at 01:39

Brazil's ex-Petrobras director Paulo Roberto Costa claims corruption

An ex-director of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras has accused more than 40 politicians of involvement in a kickback scheme over the past decade.

Paulo Roberto Costa - who is in jail and being investigated for involvement in the alleged scheme - named a minister, governors and congressmen.

They were members of the governing Workers party and two other groups that back President Dilma Rousseff.

She is seeking re-election in a poll due on 5 October.

Many of the names were published in Veja, one of Brazil's leading magazines. Several politicians mentioned have denied involvement.

SpaceX Falcon Launches AsiaSat 6 Satellite After Weeks of Delay

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday to put the AsiaSat 6 telecommunications satellite into orbit. The rocket lifted off from its seaside launch pad at 1 a.m. ET, dashing through partly cloudy, nighttime skies as it headed toward space. Tucked inside the rocket’s nosecone was the second of two satellites owned by Hong Kong-based AsiaSat.

The first satellite, AsiaSat 8, was successfully delivered into an orbit 22,200 miles (35,700 kilometers) above Earth on Aug. 5. "With the two satellites coming out of the factory approximately the same time we were able to book back-to-back missions," said AsiaSat chief executive William Wade. The two launches cost AsiaSat about $110 million, Wade said. SpaceX had planned to launch AsiaSat 6 two weeks ago, but delayed the flight to recheck the rocket’s systems following an unrelated accident that claimed the company’s prototype F9R reusable rocket during a test flight on Aug. 22.