WHO to Start Prequalifying Biosimilars for Cancer Treatment

4 May 2017 - The World Health Organization (WHO) announced its plan to pilot a new project to prequalify biosimilars for cancer treatment. The decision was announced at a 2-day conference in Geneva about how to increase access to biotherapeutic medicines. The move is expected to bring down the prices of the most expensive cancer treatments available, making them more accessible to low- and middle-income countries.

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IAEA Releases Improved Self-Assessment Tool for Nuclear and Radiation Safety Infrastructure

On May 4, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched a new version of the Self-Assessment of Regulatory Infrastructure for Safety (SARIS) tool, designed to help countries determine whether their nuclear and radiation safety infrastructure meets IAEA safety standards. These standards comprise over 100 documents which outline the basics of how to establish, maintain and continuously improve nuclear and radiation safety regulatory frameworks.

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ISO 20400 Launches New Sustainability Guidelines for Supply Chains

The International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) launch of ISO 20400:2017 this April set new international guidelines for sustainable procurement. The new standard considers environmental as well social and economic sustainability in its procurement guidelines. However, while the new standard outlines how organisations can integrate efficient measures into their procurement methods, it stops short of making suggestions for changing the procurement methods themselves.

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World Day for Safety and Health at Work Encourages Reporting of Workplace Casualty Data

April 28 was the annual World Day for Safety and Health at Work, an awareness-raising campaign started by the International Labour Organization in 2003 to focus attention on occupational safety & health issues around the world. The theme of this year’s event was the need for countries to collect and report reliable OSH data, in response to Target 8.8 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which calls for countries to report “frequency rates of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries, by sex and migrant status.”

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