Recent News

By Region: South Asia

Biosafety concerns for labs in the developing world

(Nature.com) Biocontainment labs across the Asia-Pacific region all too often fail to live up to the term. An inspection of dozens of labs has found that nearly one-third of the biosafety hoods intended to protect workers from deadly pathogens did not work properly — an offence for which a Western lab could be shut down. Read More »

May 23, 2012
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, Biosafety, International, and Research
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Hester to launch vaccines for cattle and sheep diseases soon

(IBNLive.com) Ahmedabad – Animal vaccine manufacturer, Hester Biosciences today said it would soon commercially launch seven vaccines for specific cattle and sheep diseases in India. “In next six months we shall launch around five vaccines for specific cattle and sheep diseases in India, for which technology has been acquired from Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI),” Read More »

May 21, 2012
| Filed under South Asia, Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Research
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Congress, Bioterrorism and Asia

(The Diplomat) Last week, I wrote on the danger partisanship posed to U.S. policymaking, including foreign policy. But as former Sen. Bob Graham has suggested, political turf wars aren’t all about partisanship – politicians are quite happy to place their own influence in Congress’s myriad committees above the nation’s good. This likely won’t come as Read More »

May 15, 2012
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, South Asia, Bioterrorism, International, and Policy & Initiatives
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The Food and Drug Administration’s Expanding Global Reach

(The Atlantic) The FDA has just released a classy new report on Global Engagement, summarizing its efforts to deal with issues raised by the globalization of drugs, medical devices, and foods. This is a big deal. In 2009, 300,000 foreign facilities in more than 150 countries exported $2 trillion worth of FDA-regulated products to the Read More »

May 14, 2012
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South Asia, Agriculture, International, and Policy & Initiatives
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How the World Health Organization is Helping to Prevent a Catastrophic H5N1 …

(World Health Organization HQ, Geneva) H5N1 influenza is what keeps people here up at night. The flu strain is deadly to humans on an order of magnitude greater than any other flu virus in history, including the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. It kills approximately 60% of the people it infects. Just to put that Read More »