A partnership between US drug maker Pfizer and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to speed up the development of vaccines to prevent diseases that cause newborn mortality would also advance efforts to make a high-tech malaria vaccine, Bill Gates said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Pfizer and the foundation will also work with Rwanda, Malawi and other African countries to increase access to all of the company’s medicines and vaccines for their populations.
“[We have] a dream for [beating] malaria, and we'll talk to all the great mRNA companies, including Pfizer, about this … we could use that mRNA platform to make a really powerful malaria vaccine,” Mr Gates said.
The number of deaths from malaria is rising again, partly due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Climate change also risks spreading malaria-carrying mosquitoes to previously unaffected areas.
Drug and insecticide resistance are also on the increase, according to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international financing and partnership organisation.
Covid-19 also accelerated the development of mRNA technology by Pfizer and other pharmaceutical makers.
“We have the malaria vaccine that we funded with [British pharmaceutical company] GSK. But the duration of protection is too short and so [it could be] possible now that mRNA has been proven, that we'll be able to solve that problem,” said Mr Gates.
The day-to-day fight against Malaria requires a dynamic response, Mr Gates said.
“We have pretty good drugs and pretty good bed nets, we have to constantly change the drugs because you get drug resistance … we have to change the active ingredients, we have a great pipeline of that,” he said.
“We have some genetic approaches called gene drive, that are still in the laboratory that may cut mosquito populations.”
More funding is key, however, said Mr Gates.
“So, a lot of R&D investment [is needed], a lot of delivery investment, Global Fund is the biggest multilateral in that space,” he said.
“And so hopefully, if they can raise the $18 billion they hope to, we'll take the increase in malaria deaths of the last couple of years and get it back down to a much lower number.”
Mr Gates has worked with UAE President, Sheikh Mohamed, for more than a decade on efforts to combat malaria.
At the announcement of the initiative in Davos on Wednesday, Malawi's President Lazarus Chakwera said it was “not a handout but a real partnership”.
“For Malawi, where access to quality medicines and vaccines is a real challenge, this accord means that our quest for universal health care in Malawi has a real shot,” he said.
In terms of the distribution of medicines and vaccines, Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda will initially take on responsibilities for logistics, but in the future, other established trade hubs — such as the UAE — could be brought into the alliance to support these efforts, Pfizer chief executive Albert Bouria said.
“I think those five countries will be the first ones to organise the logistics, so that we can have [a] flow of the medicine without any interruption,” Mr Bouria said.
“Logistics will be one of the main issues that needs to be addressed.”
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame said it is crucial to “make sure that we pay attention to availability, to affordability, and access by everyone in our country [to healthcare] without leaving behind any level of income people in our country".
David Haye record
Total fights: 32
Wins: 28
Wins by KO: 26
Losses: 4
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Sebastian Stefan, Sebastian Morar and Claudia Pacurar
Based: Dubai, UAE
Founded: 2014
Number of employees: 36
Sector: Logistics
Raised: $2.5 million
Investors: DP World, Prime Venture Partners and family offices in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
Best Academy: Ajax and Benfica
Best Agent: Jorge Mendes
Best Club : Liverpool
Best Coach: Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Best Goalkeeper: Alisson Becker
Best Men’s Player: Cristiano Ronaldo
Best Partnership of the Year Award by SportBusiness: Manchester City and SAP
Best Referee: Stephanie Frappart
Best Revelation Player: Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid and Portugal)
Best Sporting Director: Andrea Berta (Atletico Madrid)
Best Women's Player: Lucy Bronze
Best Young Arab Player: Achraf Hakimi
Kooora – Best Arab Club: Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia)
Kooora – Best Arab Player: Abderrazak Hamdallah (Al-Nassr FC, Saudi Arabia)
Player Career Award: Miralem Pjanic and Ryan Giggs
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff
By Sean Penn
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Notable cricketers and political careers
- India: Kirti Azad, Navjot Sidhu and Gautam Gambhir (rumoured)
- Pakistan: Imran Khan and Shahid Afridi (rumoured)
- Sri Lanka: Arjuna Ranatunga, Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan (rumoured)
- Bangladesh (Mashrafe Mortaza)
Match info:
Wolves 1
Boly (57')
Manchester City 1
Laporte (69')
THE SPECS
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Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Power: 110 horsepower
Torque: 147Nm
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Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
PREMIER LEAGUE FIXTURES
All kick-off times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Saturday
Liverpool v Manchester United - 3.30pm
Burnley v West Ham United - 6pm
Crystal Palace v Chelsea - 6pm
Manchester City v Stoke City - 6pm
Swansea City v Huddersfield Town - 6pm
Tottenham Hotspur v Bournemouth - 6pm
Watford v Arsenal - 8.30pm
Sunday
Brighton and Hove Albion v Everton - 4.30pm
Southampton v Newcastle United - 7pm
Monday
Leicester City v West Bromwich Albion - 11pm
'Munich: The Edge of War'
Director: Christian Schwochow
Starring: George MacKay, Jannis Niewohner, Jeremy Irons
Rating: 3/5
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
GIANT REVIEW
Starring: Amir El-Masry, Pierce Brosnan
Director: Athale
Rating: 4/5
Mobile phone packages comparison
Name: Peter Dicce
Title: Assistant dean of students and director of athletics
Favourite sport: soccer
Favourite team: Bayern Munich
Favourite player: Franz Beckenbauer
Favourite activity in Abu Dhabi: scuba diving in the Northern Emirates
Liverpool's all-time goalscorers
Ian Rush 346
Roger Hunt 285
Mohamed Salah 250
Gordon Hodgson 241
Billy Liddell 228
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Unresolved crisis
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president was ousted, Moscow annexed Crimea and then backed a separatist insurgency in the east.
Fighting between the Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces has killed more than 14,000 people. In 2015, France and Germany helped broker a peace deal, known as the Minsk agreements, that ended large-scale hostilities but failed to bring a political settlement of the conflict.
The Kremlin has repeatedly accused Kiev of sabotaging the deal, and Ukrainian officials in recent weeks said that implementing it in full would hurt Ukraine.
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'Project Power'
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Rating: 3.5/5
Founders: Ines Mena, Claudia Ribas, Simona Agolini, Nourhan Hassan and Therese Hundt
Date started: January 2017, app launched November 2017
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Private/Retail/Leisure
Number of Employees: 18 employees, including full-time and flexible workers
Funding stage and size: Seed round completed Q4 2019 - $1m raised
Funders: Oman Technology Fund, 500 Startups, Vision Ventures, Seedstars, Mindshift Capital, Delta Partners Ventures, with support from the OQAL Angel Investor Network and UAE Business Angels