ALEXANDRIA: Egypt’s Rameda Pharmaceutical has received requests to export Anviziram tablets, which are used to treat patients with the new coronavirus, to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Yemen, but needs a government approval first, its CEO told Reuters.
The company said earlier this month it had started manufacturing Anviziram, the generic equivalent of the Japanese antiviral Avigan, and had also received an approval from the Egyptian Drug Authority to manufacture Remedsivir, a Gilead Sciences Inc. antiviral used for treating COVID-19.
Rameda, which listed 49 percent of its shares on the Egyptian exchange last year, has produced quantities enough Anviziram tablets to cover “appropriate numbers of patients in the Egyptian market,” said its CEO Amr Mursi.
The company is providing the drug to the Egyptian health ministry to be used in hospitals. Mursi said it would be available to the public before the end of July, adding its commercial price was still being negotiated.
He expects more requests from Gulf countries to import Anviziram, but the company’s response depends on the approval of the Egyptian authorities.
“We will discuss this with them next week to see whether we will be able to export or not,” Mursi said.
Egypt’s Rameda gets requests to export COVID-19 drug
https://arab.news/vtrwe
Egypt’s Rameda gets requests to export COVID-19 drug
- Egypt’s Rameda Pharmaceutical has received requests to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Yemen
- The company is providing the drug to the Egyptian health ministry to be used in hospitals
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
