Last week the Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) refuted reports that it plans to increase premiums for adherents of Community-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) ahead of the pension body’s takeover of the insurance scheme. Although the move aims at improving services, the takeover is expected to come at no additional cost according to Dr Daniel Ufitikirezi, the managing director of RSSB. Speaking at a workshop that brought together different officials from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders, to discuss a smooth transition ahead of the takeover, Ufitikirezi confirmed that there will be no new charges. Current premiums range from Rwf3,000 to Rwf7,000 depending on the economic status of beneficiaries. Despite the fact that the scheme has previously covered up to 90 per cent of Rwandans, it has of late been dogged by inefficiencies, with subscribers claiming to be discriminated against especially in acquisition of medicine. Statistics from the ministry indicate that during the fiscal year 2013-14, the rate of subscription was 73 per cent. Meanwhile genetic sequence data on two of the deadliest but poorly understood viruses are to be made available to researchers worldwide in real time as scientists seek to speed up understanding of Ebola and MERS infections. The project, led by British scientists with West African and Saudi Arabian collaboration, hopes to encourage laboratories around the world to use the live data that is updated whenever new cases emerge. Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust Global Health charity, an organisation which is funding the work, said the collective expertise of the world’s infectious disease experts is more powerful than any single lab, and the best way of tapping into this is to make data freely available as soon as possible. The gene sequences, already available for MERS cases and soon to come in the case of Ebola, will be posted on the website virological.org for anyone to see, access and use. In other developments, final clinical trials of a malaria vaccine also considered the first to reach this stage suggest that it could help protect millions of children against malaria although tests on 16,000 children from seven African countries found that booster doses were of limited use and vaccines in young babies were not effective. After children aged 5-17 months were given three doses of the vaccine, the immunization was only 46 per cent effective. But experts maintain that getting the vaccine this far is a scientific milestone. Data from the trial published in The Lancet showed that the success rate fell to even lower levels in younger infants. Scientists have been working on the vaccine for more than 20 years, but observers believe there is still a long way to go. RTS, S/AS01 is the first malaria vaccine to reach advanced trials and show any sign of working in young children.However, there is currently no licensed vaccine against malaria anywhere in the world yet around 1,300 children die in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria every day.
