21-Apr-16 The Indonesian government has decided to develop its own vaccine with state-owned company PT Bio Farma. The Health Ministry said it would not use the vaccine issued by Sanofi because it did not match with the types of dengue commonly found in Indonesia. [image: Break Dengue]

14-Apr-16 The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has signed a SAR200 mn (USD53 mn) agreement to provide medical care for poor rural people in India, funding 15 mobile health clinics. The money is part of a SAR1 bn fund which will also deploy 60 mobile clinics in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Yemen, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. [image: Arab News]

14-Apr-16 Millions of people in developing countries are at risk of going without even the most basic health services as a result of low domestic health spending and slow growth in international aid for health. Nearly half of 80 developing nations are unlikely to meet the 2040 international target of USD86 per person per year. [image: Reuters / Camille Lepage]

12-Apr-16 Emerging markets focused bank Standard Chartered has launched five eye care projects costing USD1.6 mn to bring in innovation and strengthen the delivery of eye-care to India by 2019. In India, around 15 million people are thought to be blind, with cataract the most avoidable blindness (63%), followed by refractive error (20%) and glaucoma (5.8%). Yet 80% of blindness is avoidable with the right treatment. [image: Standard Chartered Bank]

04-Apr-16 The Philippines has launched the world's first public immunization program for dengue fever, seeking to administer to a million schoolchildren a vaccine against a mosquito-borne disease estimated to infect 390 mn people a year globally. The Philippines has the highest dengue incidence in the Western Pacific, recording 200,415 cases in 2015. [image: South China Morning Post]