Diabolic Digest
Tropical
diseases ignored by companies
By Khaled Diab
The
patent-busting battle to get affordable generic AIDS drugs to millions of
HIV-positive people in the developing world has received wide publicity. The
statistics for AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are startling: in some countries, two
out of every three adults are HIV-positive.
July 2002
Less
known is the comparably serious threat posed to the developing world by
tropical and infectious diseases. Malaria kills millions and is estimated to
have slashed Africa's economic power south of the Sahara by half, while
sleeping sickness threatens another 60 million people on the continent.
But pharmaceutical companies appear unwilling or unable to make the investment
to fight these scourges.
Of the world's top 20 drug firms recently polled, none had brought a drug to
market in the past five years for neglected tropical diseases.
According to specialists, the problem does not lie in the science but in the
economics. The main victims of these neglected diseases do not register on the
radar of the market because they are so desperately poor.
"We've spent three years investigating this and have found that drug
companies have no interest in tropical diseases because there is no market
incentive," says Bernard Pécoul of international humanitarian NGO Médecins
sans Frontières (MSF).
Instead, drug firms plan to release eight new drugs for impotence and seven for
obesity, a recent report by MSF has found, while the illnesses that make up 90%
of the global disease burden get only 10% of the research money because they
primarily affect poor countries.
To address this obvious gap, MSF, which won the Nobel peace prize in 1999 for
its international public health efforts, has just launched its Drugs for
Neglected Diseases Initiative. MSF is working on creating a 'needs-driven'
global drug development network that will provide treatment at cost to the
end-user.
Although the network is not up-and-running yet, MSF already has four pilot
projects in the pipeline to develop treatments for three neglected diseases,
including resistant strains of malaria, for which some early research has been
conducted or candidate drugs exist.
Through these pilots, MSF is attempting to demonstrate that developing
medicines for neglected diseases need not cost the earth. MSF argues that a
great deal of valuable research lies disused in research laboratories around
the world and that drugs already on the market can be adapted for other
diseases.
"A lot of neglected diseases are quite well-documented. We want to tap
into this existing knowledge base and translate it into actual products,"
says Pécoul. MSF is setting the groundwork for the network by collaborating
with research institutions in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.
MSF envisions the network, once it is up-and-running, as a publicly funded
independent system that will cooperate with industry on a scientific, but not
financial, level. It hopes to attract money from EU and US governments, as well
as those in the developing world. MSF will be holding its first potential donor
meeting in Geneva today (25 July).
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