Drawing on Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) extensive experience treating children with TB, our authors unpack some of the most important challenges in diagnosing paediatric TB, and how the updated WHO guidelines could improve the situation to save many more young lives.

On February 9th, the United Kingdom Health Security Agency announced two confirmed cases and one probable (since confirmed) case of Lassa fever. One of these patients has since died. Cases of Lassa fever are unusual for this part of the world — prior to these cases, only 8 cases had ever been identified in the country, with the last two in 2009.

As we turn the corner on another challenging year for the world, we want to share with you some of our hopes and dreams for better times ahead and some of the work our colleagues have been doing around the world to make them real.

In our final blog to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Doha Declaration, we asked Dr. Bernard Pecoul, then head of MSF’s Access Campaign in 2001, to reflect on MSF’s role in the process, and the impact of the Doha Declaration on MSF’s medical humanitarian work. As well, with his current hat on as Executive Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), we asked him to reflect on how the twin challenges of access and innovation can be best met today.

In our mini-series to mark the 20th anniversary of the 2001 Doha Declaration, we turn to a lawyer and economist who worked as a consultant to the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the process leading up to the agreement on the declaration. Dr. Carlos Correa also attended the ministerial conference itself in 2001 in Doha, along with all the key actors. He is now the Executive Director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental organisation of developing countries, and continues to work with their governments on issues around intellectual property and public health.

With the recent postponement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Geneva, uncertainty swirls around the fate of the WTO TRIPS Waiver on intellectual property of COVID-19 medical tools, which was to have been central to the ministerial discussions and the culmination of many months of mobilisation and support for the proposal first brought by India and South Africa in October 2020.