News and blog

A new vaccine against the most deadly forms of pneumonia, one of the world's biggest killers of children, will be launched in Nicaragua from Sunday as part of an effort to prevent 700,000 deaths in poorer countries by 2015. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization...

A new vaccine to be rolled out in Africa's Meningitis Belt could not only rewrite the way MSF responds to epidemics in the region, but also the way vaccines are developed for people in developing countries. Read more....

The sound of hammering can be heard all over flood-hit areas of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtoonkh’wa province. In his village outside the town of Charsadda, Rehman Ahmed is trying to fix lengths of canvas and some pieces of wood to cover the large gaps in the...

FORMER PRESIDENT of Ireland Mary Robinson is well known for her work as a human rights advocate, but she singles out a little-known health partnership as one of the biggest success stories she’s been involved with. The Gavi Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) has...

In October 1977, in the country of Somalia, a young man named Ali Maow Maalin contracted the world's last case of naturally occurring smallpox. By not passing the disease to any other person he broke the chain of transmission that had existed from the...

Public health triumphs like this don't come along every day. An array of public and private health groups is launching a cheap new vaccine against bacterial meningitis the first ever designed for Africa. Before now, vaccines and most other medicines have been developed for wealthy markets...

Meningitis is an awful disease. It comes on suddenly, kills frequently, disables its survivors for life, and devastates families economically and emotionally. When it occurs in epidemics, as it does frequently in Africa's "Meningitis Belt", it has the power to disrupt entire communities and health...