Utano Podcast | Let's Talk about Health in Africa

With more than half of the people on the African continent not having access to basic essential medicines according to the World Health Organization resulting in an estimated one million deaths, the challenge of poor access to medicines will not be solved by one government or a single organization alone. There is only so much that any single organization can do and that is why partnership is so im...

#africa #health #clinicaltrials #decentralisedclinicaltrials #healthcare #globalhealth #medicines #vaccines #ama #africanmedicinesagency #ema #europeanmedicinesagency 30 October 2023 | Lenias Hwenda | The African Medicines Agency - what comes next | Let's Talk about Health in Africa | Chimwemwe Chamdimba The coming year in 2024 is going to be an exciting one according to Chimwemwe Chamdimba, t...

#africa #health #clinicaltrials #decentralisedclinicaltrials #healthcare #globalhealth #medicines #vaccines 27 April 2023 | Lenias Hwenda | Let's Talk about Health in Africa | Craig Lipset. In this conversation, Craig Lipset discusses with Lenias Hwenda how decentralised clinical trials are being increasingly used in clinical research in Europe and the US and how they can help to expand divers...

14 March 2023 | Lenias Hwenda talks about rare diseases in Africa with Kelly du Plessis, the CEO of Rare Diseases South Africa. Rare diseases remain poorly understood by health authorities and yet they are increasingly affecting African populations. Kelly du Plessis explains some of the challenges with rare diseases in Africa and how her organisation, Rare Diseases South Africa has been solving th...

Have you ever wondered why foreign aid has persisted for so long? Dr Olusoji Adeyi, the President of Reilient Health Systems and a former Director at The World Bank explains the nuances of foreign aid and why it is counter-productive. Foreign aid has persisted in order to support a foreign aid industrial complex that has been built around aid. This complex is sustained for the benefit of those aro...

31 Aug 2021 | Lenias Hwenda | Utano Podcast | Let's Talk about Health in Africa | The size of Africa´s cancer burden and what governments should do about it 

To celebrate International Women’s Month, we are hosting a Live Podcast to explore explores  the personal and professional experiences of high level professional African women working in global health. Recently, there have been growing calls amongst global health academics to decolonize global health in the leading medical journals like The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. The decoloni...

22 Feb 2022 | Lenias Hwenda | Let's Talk about Health in Africa | NTD Series This is how Egypt, Togo and Malawi achieved lymphatic filariasis elimination  | Dr Didier Bakajika | WHO Technical Officer for Neglected Tropical Diseases (Lymphatic Filariasis and Onchocerciasis)  Dr Didier Bakajika talks to us about the challenge of lymphatic filariasis prevention and control and how countries...

#ntds #endtheneglect #neglectednotrare

11 Feb 2022 | This is a big public health problem you have heard of - #snakebite and #rabies . They kill ten of thousands of people every year due to limited availability of antivenom and, rabies vaccine and immunoglobulins. Many victims live far away from health facilities and those who are luck enough to get to one often find that either the treatments they need are not available. This public he...

04 February 2022 | South Africa has been offered a lot of vaccines, that it has turned down which has made donors very unhappy.  "I don't think donors always understand that the logistics of each vaccine is different. Countries need time to gear up, so you can't have a shelf life of a month or two months to distribute a vaccine and get the cold chain properly in place, to be able to be respon...

28 January 2022 | What should African countries and the African Medicines Agency be doing to change a harmful dynamic driven largely by perceptions of the risks by sponsors and African people? African people think they are unethically targeted for clinical trials whilst sponsors of clinical trials fear that the risks of doing trials in African countries are much too high. If you consider that the...

21 January 2022 | According to Dr  Mwinzi Pauline , the technical officer for #ntds at World Health Organization Africa office, countries in #africa lost significant gains made in  #schistosomiasis  control due to the  #Covid19  pandemic. We can prevent further erosion of these gains by stepping up investment in tackling #schistosomiasis and other #ntds . Some of the actio...

30 December 2021 | Imagine a disease that affects 60 million people, with only 3 treatments, one of which kills 5% of the patients, and administration can only be done in hospital. Dr Philippe Neau and his colleagues in Sanofi, NGOs, WHO and governments are working to change the paradigm of treating sleeping sickness to improve the available treatments by bringing oral medicines that  can be...

21 Dec 2021 | Prof. Agnes Binagwaho is one of the best public health leaders coming out of Africa. She speaks from the experience of being one of the key architects of Rwandans healthcare system, which is one of the most equitable health systems globally. In this podcast, she shares many valuable insights that many public health leaders not just in Africa will do well to emulate. Prof. Binagwaho s...

 13 December 2021 | Africa has many existing biotech companies and CapeBio Technologies is one of them. The CEO of Capebio, Daniel Nima talks about how the biotech is harnessing unique ingredients, (enzymes) from the plants that have adapted to the harsh environment in South Africa´s Cape region to make diagnostics for detecting diseases, viruses and other infections. The plants in this regio...

16 Nov 2021  | Lenias Hwenda | Let's Talk about Health in Africa | Titans of Industry  | Oramed´s oral insulin and oral Covid vaccine are powerful innovations that could transform access dynamics in Africa  | Nadav Kidron, President & CEO Oramed Pharmaceuticals Oramed was recently given approval from SAHPRA to initiate a phase 1 clinical trials for insulin. This vaccine is oral...

09 Nov 2021 |  Africa´s largest pharmaceutical multinational corporation, Aspen, is a trailblazing company that has shown that you can occupy global leadership position out of Africa. In a fireside conversation with Lenias Hwenda, Stavros Nicolaou, a Senior Executive at Aspen Pharmacare lamented that the his observation that countries on the African continent have a problem with pharmaceutica...

9 September 2021 | After international mechanisms failed to meet the need of Africans in the Covid-19 pandemic, would Africa invest so much energy in multilateral mechanism or rather focus more on regional coperation? Dr John Nkengasong the Director of the Africa CDC answers this question.

24 May 2021 | Lenias Hwenda: Let's Talk about Health in Africa - African people should be benefiting from the wealth and natural resources of their countries. Lenias Hwenda in conversation with Honourable Minister Jay Naidoo, a former Minister for Reconstruction and Development, and the Minister of Post, Telecommunications and Broadcasting in the government of President Nelson Mandela. Many Africa...

28 October 2021 | Post independent Africa has managed its public health according to the wishes of international development partners. This has resulted in health systems that are distorted towards infectious diseases partly to limit the threat that they pose to the West. The notion of health security global health took the perspective of limiting as much as possible the perceived threat that infe...

 26 October 2021 |  In its recent budget, the government of Mauritius announced its plans to add a new pillar to its economy by establishing pharmaceutical manufacturing in Africa. Aspen Global is leading private sector efforts to support the government put in place a framework for implementing this plan. Listen to Samer Kassem, the CEO of Aspen Global tell us more about this ground brea...

14 October 2021 |  For years now the third agency of the African Union that is working on public health, The AUDA-Nepad has been working on regulatory harmonisation for medicines across the African continent. The goal has always been to build towards establishing an African Medicines Agency to parallel the European Medicines Agency. The Treaty for establishing the African Medicines Agency has...

The WHO, the African Union and the Government of South Africa have partnered to establish Africa´s first mRNA hubs in Cape Town in South Africa. This collaborative initiative is being led by Professor Petro Terblanche, the Managing Director of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines. The company has built so many capabilities and has penetrated US andEuropean markets with its cannabinoids based products an...

 2 September 2021 | Africa has pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities that are not so well know because no one talks about these issues. This is why it might surprise some to discover that companies like Sothema have been making biologics like insulin on the African continent for 40 years and is now partnering with Sinopharm to make one of the few vaccines that are available and that have...