Month: July 2014

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron called on Wednesday for global action to tackle the threat of drug-resistant superbugs and said Britain planned to take a leading role in finding ways to spur the development of new antibiotics. A world without effective antibiotics would push medicine back into the "dark ages", he said, with routine surgery, treatments for cancer and organ transplants potentially becoming impossible. Cameron announced an independent review led by former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill to pinpoint the problems and identify why so few new antibiotics are being developed. Cameron said he had discussed the issue at a G7 summit of leaders in Brussels last month and won specific support for the initiative from U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The French government, looking to cut healthcare costs, plans to authorize the use of Roche cancer drug Avastin as an alternative eye disease treatment to the much pricier Lucentis, marketed by both Roche and Novartis. The government said on Monday it had introduced an amendment to its social security budget bill that would allow doctors to use Avastin as a treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD)- a leading cause of blindness among the elderly. The initiator of the measure, Socialist lawmaker Gerard Bapt, argues that encouraging the use of the drug, which costs 30 times less than Lucentis, could bring the state annual savings of at least 200 million euros ($273 million). Roche and Novartis could not immediately be reached for comment.

By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) – The number of deaths attributed to an epidemic of Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone stood at 467 by Monday, out of 759 known cases in total, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The WHO figures include confirmed, probable and suspected cases.

Roche Holding AG said it would pay up to $1.725 billion to buy Seragon Pharmaceuticals, a privately-held U.S. biotech company that researches breast cancer treatments. Roche has long dominated the field of breast cancer with drugs such as Herceptin and recently won approval for Kadcyla and Perjeta, two treatments for patients whose cancer cells contain increased amounts of the protein known as HER2. San Diego-based Seragon was spun out from Aragon Pharmaceuticals last year when that company was bought by Johnson & Johnson . Seragon is focused on developing a new generation of oral medicines that it believes offer an improved way of tackling hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, and potentially other cancers.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron called on Wednesday for global action to tackle the threat of drug-resistant superbugs and said Britain planned to take a leading role in finding ways to spur the development of new antibiotics. A world without effective antibiotics would push medicine back into the "dark ages", he said, with routine surgery, treatments for cancer and organ transplants potentially becoming impossible. Cameron announced an independent review led by former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill to pinpoint the problems and identify why so few new antibiotics are being developed. Cameron said he had discussed the issue at a G7 summit of leaders in Brussels last month and had won specific support for the initiative from U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

LONDON (AP) — On a recent morning in London, Lara Thomson practiced spinning on benches, swinging from metal bars and balancing off raised ledges — all elements of a daredevil discipline known as "parkour."

By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) – African refugees who have fled wars or persecution face cuts in their daily rations because of a $225 million shortfall for vital food programmes, the United Nations said on Tuesday. They are showing show "unacceptable levels of malnutrition", leading to stunting and anaemia in children, the World Food Programme and the U.N. refugee agency said. They include nearly 450,000 refugees in the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan whose rations have been halved, the sister agencies said in a joint appeal to donor countries. The WFP needs $186 million to restore full rations and avoid further cuts through the end of this year for the 2.4 million refugees in 22 countries of sub-Saharan Africa under its care.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A onetime Army Ranger and former CEO of a Fortune 500 consumer products company, Robert McDonald may face his toughest challenge yet in fixing the huge, scandal-plagued Veterans Affairs Department.