E-DRUG: MSF: R&D System Failing to Meet Health Needs of Developing Countries
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For Immediate Release
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM FAILING TO MEET HEALTH NEEDS OF DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
Doctors Without Borders Challenges Ministerial Summit on Health Research
to Ensure Development of New Medicines
Geneva/Mexico City, November 16, 2004
The current system for health
research and development is failing to bring the benefits of medical
progress to the poor, according to the medical humanitarian organization
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on the opening day
of the Ministerial Summit on Health Research, Bridging the Know-Do Divide
to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, in Mexico City.
Todays research and development (R&D) system fails the poor in two ways:
new drugs that come onto the market are too expensive, and the health
needs of people in developing countries are being ignored,? says Ellen ?t
Hoen, policy advocacy director for MSF?s Campaign for Access to Essential
Medicines. For this Summit to be a success, it needs to define policies
to ensure the development of new and adapted medicines, diagnostics, and
vaccines for neglected diseases.
Medicine research and development is almost exclusively confined to the
private sector, driven by prospects for profitable returns rather than
public health needs. As a result, only one percent of medicines developed
in the last 25 years were for tropical diseases.* These diseases kill
hundreds of thousands of people every year, mainly in the developing
world.
Our patients are sometimes more afraid of dying from the treatment than
of dying from the disease, said Virginia Morrison, an MSF nurse working
in Angola. ?The national protocol for second-stage sleeping sickness in
Angola is melarsoprol, a horrible 55-year-old drug which burns the veins
and kills one in 20 patients. The only current alternative is
eflornithine, which requires four infusions a day for 14 days and is not
adapted to resource-poor settings. Even though there is a lot of basic
research into the disease, the results are not being translated into new,
effective, safe, and easy-to-use drugs and diagnostics.?
Another example is Chagas disease, a parasitic disease that causes
irreparable damage to internal organs and kills 50,000 people each year,
mainly in poor rural communities in Latin America. Chagas patients are of
no interest to pharmaceutical companies; many people die without ever
being diagnosed. We desperately need new drugs to treat people with
Chagas, says Silvia Moriana, coordinator of MSFs program in Bolivia.
Global spending on health research has increased from $US30 billion in
1986 to $US105.9 billion today. Yet 90% of this money is still spent on
the health problems of less than 10% of the world?s population.**
Governments need to take responsibility for health R&D policy, says
Ellen t Hoen. We have heard promises, but we see no action.
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* Trouiller P, Olliaro P, Torreele E, Orbinski J, Laing R, Ford N. Drug
development for neglected diseases: a deficient market and a public-health
policy failure. Lancet 22 June 2002 359;9324: 2188-2194.
** Global Forum for Health Research, Monitoring financial flows for
health research, November 2004. www.globalforumhealth.org
More information and a full briefing document from MSF on this issue can
be found at:
http://www.accessmed-msf.org/
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Rachel M. Cohen
U.S. Director, Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Doctors Without Borders/Midecins Sans Frontihres (MSF)
333 Seventh Avenue, 2nd Floor * New York, NY * 10001-5004 * USA
Tel: +1-212-655-3762
Mobile: +1-917-331-9077
Fax: +1-212-679-7016
E-mail: rachel.cohen@newyork.msf.org
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://www.accessmed-msf.org/