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Last Thursday (28 October) Fiocruz signed, during a ceremony that took place at the headquarters of AstraZeneca, in Cambridge, United Kingdom, a joint declaration of commitment for the acquisition of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) with the goal of producing 60 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine (recombinant) in order to make up the deliveries of the Foundation for 2022. The commitment signed by the institutions aims to guarantee wide availability of vaccine doses for the first semester. With the guarantee of the imported ingredient, Fiocruz will be able to deliver, through the…
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A new study published in Nature Communications last Thursday (28/11) shows that two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced in Brazil by Fiocruz, provide high protection against the Gamma variant in people above 60 years old. Based on São Paulo, the research shows that the second dose increases protection against death by about 30% when compared to the first dose, reaching an effectivity of 93.6%. Carried out by 20 researchers in Brazil, the United States and Spain, the study called Effectiveness of the ChAdOx1 vaccine in older adults during the circulation of the Gamma variant in São…
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Ten years after its signing, the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health is more relevant than ever, as shown by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world. To celebrate the document’s tenth anniversary and evaluate the approaches adopted since, two webinars held last Thursday (21 October) brought together many actors that were crucial for the negotiations that culminated in the declaration and for the quest for its implementation. While the World Health Organization (WHO) organized the seminar Actions on the Social Determinants of Health Equity, opened by the…
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The team of the Viral Vaccines Laboratory of the National Institute for Quality Control in Health (INCQS/Fiocruz), which works with immunobiological drugs against rabies (LVV-Raiva), is participating in the second phase of an international study to replace potency assays in anti-rabies vaccines, traditionally made using mice for over 50 years.
Under code BSP148 and funded by the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and Healthcare (EDQM), an institution of the Council of Europe in charge of the issuing of the European Pharmacopoeia, the research aims to validate the immuno-…
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Production of the Fiocruz Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) for COVID-19 vaccines is ongoing and is now moving on to a new and important phase of the process. Two pre-validation batches of the product manufactured by Fiocruz have been approved in all in-house quality tests and are now on their way to an external quality control at USA laboratories. At these labs, the samples will go through a complex testing process that involves 14 tests in addition to those carried out in Brazil, the longest of which takes 56 days to complete. This set of tests compare Brazilian and foreign APIs,…
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When Fiocruz joined the small summit of guest countries of the Global Sustainable Technology and Innovation Community (G-STIC) in 2018, the world still did not know Sars-CoV-2. Now, while the world population takes the vaccine for COVID-19, the fifth edition of the annual conference (the fourth with the participation of the Foundation), bets on a hybrid participation model from October 24th to 26th. The agenda includes both virtual and on-site sessions looking for new technological solutions to serve the society that are environmentally friendly and aimed at 9 of the 17 Sustainable…
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Would it be possible to establish a new food model without the large producers' participation? Finding this answer is an ongoing global challenge and resounded in the seminar Food security, health and pandemics in United Nations events, organized by the Fiocruz Global Health Center (CRIS/Fiocruz). Divergent analyses and opinions revealed behind the scenes of international decisions on hunger programs and inspired empathy in provocative, necessary and urgent reflections.
"Is it possible to think of an alternative food system without the large corporations' participation? In Chile, even Coca-…
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A cooperation that dates back to the beginning of the last century and that has been renovated and expanded over the decades was celebrated last Thursday (October 14th), with the visit of Portugal’s assistant secretary of Health, António Lacerda Sales, to Fiocruz. Accompanied by the Secretary of State of the Portuguese Communities, Berta Nunes, and by ambassador Luís Faro Ramos, among other members of the delegation, Sales was received by president Nísia Trindade Lima at the International Auditorium of the Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (ENSP/Fiocruz), where they emphasized…
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After a one-year break due to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fiocruz in Antarctica (Fioantar) project resumed its scientific excursions into the continent with a new departure this Wednesday morning (10/13). After a week of quarantine with actions to fight COVID-19, including diagnostic tests before and during the period, the Ary Rongel oceanographic support ship set sail to the Comandante Ferraz Antarctic Station carrying researcher Lucas Moreira. In November, three other Fioantar researchers - Maria Ogrzewalska, Harrison Magdinier Gomes, and Maithê Magalhães - will be…
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A study led by the Center for the Integration of Data and Knowledge on Health (Cidacs/Fiocruz Bahia) suggests that C-sections may be associated with a higher risk of infant mortality, with the exception of cases in which a medical indication is clear on this procedure, which is popularly known as “cesarean” in Brazil.
Photo: Courtesy
Using data collected and provided by the Ministry of Health on more than 17 million births in Brazil between 2012 and 2018, researchers from Brazil and from the United Kingdom observed that in the group with a low indication of C-section, this procedure was…
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Sociologist and Fiocruz president, Nísia Trindade Lima, presented last Friday (October 8th) the conference Pandemic and Social Inequalities: Challenges for Global Health. The event was part of the Global Health Colloquium Series, a biannual series of lectures by Princeton University's Program in Global Health. Nísia thanked the university and Brazil Lab for the invitation, a hub that connects researchers and professors interested in public management in the country. The mediation was by Arbela Griner, postdoctoral fellow of the Program and event organizer.
Values, total social fact, and…
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Fiocruz will be part, starting next week, of a Phase 3 international multicenter study with the drug Molnupiravir, manufactured by the pharmaceutical company MSD. The goal is to verify its efficiency to prevent the COVID-19 spread and transmission among people exposed to the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The study will occur simultaneously in seven centers in Brazil, two of which are under the Fiocruz responsibility: Mato Grosso do Sul and Rio de Janeiro. The coordination is under the responsibility of researchers Julio Croda and Margareth Dalcolmo.
To evaluate the Molnupiravir use as post-exposure…
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On Thursday (September, 30th), the project for the installation of the Pharmaceutical Plant in Maputo, Mozambique capital, was concluded. The announcement was made in a joint statement by the Brazil and Mozambique governments and is the result of the technology transfer mission and partnership with the Institute of Technology in Medicines (Farmanguinhos/Fiocruz).
"We are finishing this important project with the merit of having left the factory producing, teams trained, and a set of technologies transferred that are now part of the initial Mozambican Drug Society portfolio", said the…
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The ambassador of Botswana to Brazil, Tebogo Montshome, visited Fiocruz last Thursday (October 7th). She decided to get to know the Foundation while visiting Rio de Janeiro to identify areas of possible cooperation between her country and the institution. Greeted by the Vice-President of Production and Innovation in Health, Marco Krieger, Montshome was particularly interested in staff training, research and production of drugs and vaccines.
Marco Krieger, Tebogo Montshome, Sethunya Sedimo and Augusto Paulo Silva (Photo: Peter Ilicciev)
The ambassador was accompanied by the embassy's…
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With Fiocruz among the signatories, it was launched this Wednesday (October 6), the São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health, an initiative of Planetary Health Alliance and the University of São Paulo, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The declaration is considered the first document of the global planetary health community to describe the actions needed to achieve what it calls "the great transition: a just transformation to a world that optimizes the health and all people and the planet's well-being".
Published on Wednesday in the scientific journal The…
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A new study by Fiocruz on the effectiveness of vaccination in Brazil shows that the population has benefitted from the vaccination plan against the Sars-CoV-2 in the prevention of severe cases and deaths by Covid-19, although effectiveness varies between age groups. The analysis, which also included subjects vaccinated with the first dose of the Pfizer shot, was carried out between January 17 and July 19 this year, a total of six months, in which the Gamma variant was predominant. The study evaluated more than 66 million records and is available in the MedRxiv online repository as preprint (…
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In the first decades of the twentieth century, the American multinational United Fruit Company, prominent in the production and sale of tropical fruits, found a way to deal with malnutrition among its workers in Costa Rica: it imported canned and processed foods from the United States. At the same time, the solution to high infant mortality in the banana plantation zone was the introduction of an artificial food developed by Nestlé. Years later, in Mexico, the government followed the “fortified” food trend, promoting the consumption of vitamin-enriched sugar.
No, obesity did not appear…
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The Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos/Fiocruz) is closer to starting Pediatric Praziquantel production, indicated for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that affects about 200 million people worldwide, half of whom are children. Result of the International Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium, the drug is in the clinical trials last phase. Pilot batches are expected to be produced in March 2022 and the product available in 2024.
It is a water-dispersible tablet, which facilitates its administration to children under the age of six. Until now, the medication available for this…
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The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the main subjects discussed at two meetings that drew the attention of the entire world and of the region last week. While chiefs of state and of government debated the effects of the disease at the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations, at the 59th Board of Directors and 73rd Session of the Regional Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Americas, organized by the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), ministries of health discussed how to obtain a more equitable distribution of vaccines. With several issues in common, the agendas of…
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By means of its Immunobiological Technology Institute (Bio-Manguinhos), last Monday (September 27th) Fiocruz ended the production of the first batches called pre-validation batches of the national Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) for the COVID-19 vaccine. The ingredient will now be submitted to quality control tests at the institution to then be sent to the final processing phase of the vaccine. The first pre-validation batch, which was produced early in September, is also under analysis.
The goal of the two pre-validation batches is to show that the process works as expected and, if…
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Diseases that Brazilians are very familiar with, such as dengue fever, zika and chikungunya, are being directly affected by the pandemic, both with the transfer of human and material resources to the fight against COVID-19 and with possible undernotifications. But we can learn lessons from this experience, as shown by the 20th Advanced Seminaries on Global Health and Health Diplomacy of the Fiocruz Global Health Center (CRIS/Fiocruz), held last Thursday (September 23rd). And as indicated by the Challenges and opportunities to control arbovirus diseases in COVID-19 times webinar, this problem…
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A edição extra do Boletim Observatório Covid-19 Fiocruz, publicada nesta quarta-feira (22/9), reforça a tendência de queda no indicador de ocupação de leitos de Covid-19 para adultos. Com exceção de Espírito Santo e Distrito Federal, onde se observou crescimento, entre 13 e 20 de agosto, o indicador continua apresentando sinais de queda ou estabilização no país. Segundo dados obtidos em 20 de setembro, nenhum estado está na zona crítica, com taxa superior a 80%.
O Amazonas apresentou aumento no indicador de 29% para 50%, mas permanece fora da zona de alerta: esse crescimento…
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Women are the majority in the healthcare workforce. Yet they are far from leadership positions, face unequal pay, and are often victims of bullying and sexual harassment. If the panorama described in the webinar Women in Global Health, promoted by the Fiocruz Global Health Center (Cris/Fiocruz) on the last 15th, seems bleak, it also brings foci of hope: at the same time that it exacerbated these inequalities, the COVID-19 pandemic shed light on them, broadening the debate around the theme and the search for solutions.
Coordinated by the Fiocruz vice-president of Education, Information…
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The president of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Nísia Trindade Lima, has been appointed to the Board of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). She becomes one of two representatives for Latin America on the Board. CEPI is an international organization, that aims to fund research projects to accelerate vaccines against epidemics.
CEPI has secured funding from over thirty governments, philanthropic institutions and private sector investors to date, with other twenty-five vaccine development partnerships…
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Nesta semana, no AFN Acessibilidade: Fiocruz entra com pedido de autorização para uso emergencial da vacina de Covid-19; e prédio da Cavalariça passa por obras de adequação do espaço para visitação pública. O vídeo está acessível na Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras) e em português (áudio e legenda).
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A study developed in partnership between Fiocruz Pernambuco, the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE) and the Federal Institute of Paraíba (IFPB) carried out an investigation on the evolution over time of the daily numbers of deaths by COVID-19, taking into account the scenario in 43 countries. Using physical approaches and information theory techniques, the researchers achieved results that give scientific evidence as for the efficiency of measures such as the use of face masks, social distancing, quarantines, mass testing, and education on hygiene, to restrict the impacts of the…
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Fiocruz was elected a member of the Joint Coordinating Board of the WHO’s Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). The election took place last Thursday (June 17), during the Council’s 44th meeting, giving the Foundation a mandate spanning from January 1st, 2022, to December 31st, 2025.
“This acknowledgment of Fiocruz is a momentous event. Together with the Council, the Foundation will seek to go deeper into proposals bound to a vision that takes into account mainly neglected populations all over the world, by means of efforts in the field of research, education…
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