Paul Stoffels on Ebola

Stepping Up Our Response to Ebola Less than 100 years ago, little could be done to combat global epidemics. In 1917, Spanish influenza swept the world quickly and 50 million people died. Science and medicine significantly lagged behind medical need. The World Health Organization (WHO) and other global health authorities weren’t yet formed to help coordinate a response. And governments were without options. Since then, innovation in R&D has significantly advanced vaccine research and production. Today, we are faced with the threat of a new global epidemic—the Ebola virus. The global health community must work in lockstep and with urgency to stop the spread of the disease. Within the private sector, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are mounting one of the largest scale responses to a public health threat in history. Together, we are accelerating the innovation, development and production of new Ebola medicines and vaccines. For our part, Johnson & Johnson just announced a major $200 million commitment of resources, including a promise to produce as much of our experimental Ebola vaccine regimen as we possibly can.  We have committed a large, full-time team to the job of testing, scaling up and manufacturing the vaccine.  We expect to have more than one million doses of the vaccine regimen in 2015, with 250,000 ready for broad clinical trial application by May. But without the help of governments, aid organizations and health authorities, our efforts would m...
Source: PHRMA - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news