On Nov. 19, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign announced that Walgreens Get a Shot. Give a Shot. program has helped provide 50 million lifesaving vaccines to children around the world since its inception in 2013. Walgreens also stated it would strive to provide an additional 50 million immunizations over the next five years.

A study of women, by women. We're talking about the Imbokodo trial, which is evaluating an investigational HIV vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa. As the study hits a key milestone, we sat down with South African physician and scientist Glenda Gray, who's at the helm of the groundbreaking trial.

At Pfizer, we believe our business and societal missions are the same: ensuring all individuals everywhere have access to quality medicines, vaccines and health care, and the opportunity to lead healthy lives. Every day, we strive to use our full resources – our people, products and funding – to find new ways to positively impact the health of people around the world and across their lifespan.

Ebola, Zika, SARS and the return of avian flu to the headlines recently are reminders that the threat of a new epidemic is never far away. With increased air travel and populations on the move, it doesn’t take long for a virus to spread between countries and jump across continents, with potentially catastrophic results.

Vaccines are a very effective way of preventing infectious disease but they take many years, sometimes decades, to develop. Waiting for an epidemic to start means a vaccine will almost inevitably arrive too late.