“Back in December 2022 Gavi made a promise. After years of slow progress, Gavi committed to a historic revitalisation of our human papillomavirus – or HPV – vaccine programme.

With US$ 600 million in new investment, we set a target of increasing the number of girls in the world’s most vulnerable countries protected by this lifesaver almost seven-fold, from 13 million to 86 million, and we gave ourselves just three years to do it. By the end of 2024, coverage in Africa had risen to 44%, surpassing coverage rates in Europe.

It was an ambitious target, which would require reaching new countries with the vaccine and massively expanding existing programmes.

I’m proud to announce that we have met it, ahead of schedule.

The impact of this huge expansion in the availability of and access to the HPV vaccine will be felt for years to come.

An estimated 1 million lives will be saved. US$ 2.3 billion in economic benefits could be realised. And millions of girls across the world will face a future free from the suffering and anguish caused by cervical cancer.”

From Gavi.

“Glioblastoma is among the most aggressive and fatal cancers known to medicine. It’s the disease that claimed the life of Canadian icon Gord Downie and is diagnosed in about 1,000 Canadians every year.

This cancer rarely gives patients more than a few months to live.

But a new study, with nearly half of the patients in Canada, may have started to shift that reality.

Published in The Lancet Oncology, the trial followed 34 people with glioblastoma, including 14 patients treated at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

It found that a novel technique using microscopic bubbles, triggered by focused ultrasound to temporarily open the brain’s protective barrier, allowed chemotherapy to penetrate tumour regions effectively.

Patients lived nearly 40 per cent longer — that’s a median survival of more than 31 months, compared to about 19 months in a group treated with standard therapy.”

From CTV News.

“Engineered immune cells are being used to successfully treat people with a range of debilitating autoimmune conditions, such as ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Researchers say positive results from around a dozen studies over the past three years suggest CAR-T-cell therapy could eventually be used treat any disease in which the immune system attacks the body…

Earlier this year, Bing Du, an immunologist at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and his team published the results of a CAR-T pilot study using immune cells from a donor to treat drug-resistant lupus. Donor-derived cells could act like a generic version of CAR-T treatment that could be mass-produced, cutting manufacturing time and lowering costs. Last year, Du was also involved in a world-first study of bioengineered and modified immune cells from a donor for the treatment of two rare and severe autoimmune diseases.

As part of the latest study, four women with a form of lupus that affects multiple organs received chemotherapy to reduce levels of their white blood cells, followed by an infusion of donor-derived CAR T cells. After three months, the women no longer experienced symptoms such as arthritis, swelling of blood vessels and alopecia, and one was in remission and no longer needed any medication. The other three women received low-dose steroids as a maintenance therapy.”

From Nature.

“Africa is one of only two World Health Organization (WHO) regions, alongside Europe, to exceed the first End TB Strategy milestones, recording one of the strongest global recoveries in tuberculosis (TB) control since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 shows that the African region cut TB incidence by about 28% and TB deaths by 46% between 2015 and 2024…

Despite these advances, Africa and south-east Asia accounted for nearly 69% of global TB deaths among HIV-negative people in 2024, and 71% when a patient also has HIV co-infection. An estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB in 2024, and 1.23 million died. Of the 30 countries with the highest TB burdens, 17 are in the WHO African Region, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and South Africa.”

From Nature.