6 November 2009
“I don’t belong to the high-risk group, so I will not take it. On the other hand, my daughter is pregnant, so she should take it,” Robert Woestenborghs, co-founder of the Neglected Diseases Foundation (NDF), told Khaleej Times on the sidelines of a seminar held here on Thursday.
Although the effectiveness of the swine flu vaccine is still being debated, Woestenborghs, who is also the former head of preclinical operations and project management at Johnson & Johnson Pharma, said it is best for those who are within the high-risk category to have it.
The high-risk category includes those who are above 65 years and below five years, pregnant women and those with pre-existing health conditions, chronic diseases, contributing to compromised immunity levels.
Woestenborghs was in Abu Dhabi with Herman Van Cauteren, former global head of preclinical development at Johnson & Johnson Pharma in the US and president of NDF, to present the recently established foundation and its objectives to a select group of healthcare professionals and investors.
In a seminar on the theme ‘Bridging the Innovation Gap in the Development of Breakthrough Medicines’, speakers spoke about the challenges of the “development gap” for breakthrough therapies against neglected infectious diseases and highlighted some recent promising developments in biotechnology relevant to the development of new medicines for neglected infectious diseases.
