A new diagnostic test for Chagas disease was launched in Europe in August. It demonstrated 100% sensitivity to all geographically diverse samples tested and specificity of more than 99.99% in blood donors' samples.Developed by Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics (Raritan, NJ, USA), a Johnson and Johnson company, the test will be used for screening blood donations and testing blood donors as well as for serodiagnosis of Chagas disease.

An interesting Global Forum for Health Research report, Monitoring Financial Flows for Health Research 2005: Behind the global numbers, advocates a change in the persistent divergence between the use of research resources and the burden of disease affecting less developed countries.

At the launch of the latest malaria guidelines, January 2006, the WHO called on pharmaceutical companies to immediately stop marketing single-drug artemisinin tablets and only market artemisinin combination therapies instead, to prevent malaria parasites from developing resistance to this drug. 

In September, Novartis announced an immediate and significant reduction in the average price of its antimalarial medicine Coartem® for the public market by more than one-third, to an average US$1.00 per treatment in an effort to accelerate further access to this important malaria therapy in low-income regions, particularly Africa. Novartis is on track to deliver 50 million treatments by the end of October 2006.