Burkina Faso

New funding has been provided for more trials of Novartis’s combination malaria treatment in west and central Africa, adding to ongoing efforts to tackle the disease on the continent. 

Fresenius Medical Care has agreed to pay $231m to resolve reports of overseas bribery. The US Department of Justice says the dialysis giant paid bribes to health and government officials in Angola and Saudi Arabia, and failed to keep accurate financial records in Angola, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Spain, Turkey, and several countries in West Africa.

An app for reporting adverse drug reactions developed by Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative is being tested in two African countries, where the mobile infrastructure is said to be more advanced than in EU. The app is expected to help in the collection of ADR data from malaria programs and from general medicines use.

GlaxoSmithKline's pioneering malaria vaccine looks like it could arrive within two years. The company says it will file for approval of the RTS,S vaccine with the European Medicines Agency next year, based on the latest data from its large-scale Phase III trial. It added that the World Health Organization has indicated that a policy recommendation for the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate is possible as early as 2015 if it is granted a positive scientific opinion by EMA, paving the way for decisions by African nations regarding large-scale implementation of the vaccine through their national immunization programs.