Wellcome Trust Grant

MicroPharm Limited is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant by the Wellcome Trust to progress a project entitled “A Rapid and Substantial Increase in Supplies of an Effective, Safe and Affordable Antivenom to sub-Saharan Africa”. The project is to re-establish supplies of Fav-Afrique® for the treatment of Category 1 venomous African snakes. The project entails the development of an improved manufacturing process and analytical assessment techniques.
Professor John Landon, who is MicroPharm’s Chairman and the Principal Investigator for the grant, commented “We are grateful for the Wellcome Trust’s support for this important project. Every year several hundred thousand people in sub-Saharan Africa are victims of snake envenoming resulting in large numbers of deaths. In large measure the high mortality reflects the fact that fewer than 5% of the victims receive an antivenom and, of those that do, the antivenom they receive may be ineffective. Thanks to the efforts of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Global Snakebite Initiative and others, snake bites are now receiving the attention they deserve. Thus, snake envenoming has been placed on the WHO’s list of Neglected Tropical Diseases.”

Posted on: Wednesday, 30th June 2021