For the first time, the Pasteur Institute, Médecins Sans Frontières, and five public research institutes from around the world join forces to address the lack of R&D for the world’s most neglected diseases.
The marginalized millions of ailing poor
Several fatal but curable tropical diseases afflict millions of people every year: sleeping sickness afflicts 500,000 people each year and threatens 60 million people in 36 African countries; Chagas disease threatens a quarter of Latin America’s population, or almost 100 million people; leishmaniasis affects 12 million people worldwide, mostly in the tropical countries of Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Brazil and Sudan.
Millions suffering, hundreds of thousands dying each year from the sheer lack of adequate drugs. No satisfactory treatments exist for these “neglected diseases”. The need for affordable, appropriate drugs is immense, but their availability is dismally low.
Almost non-existent research in neglected diseases
So, why are there no drugs for these poor forgotten millions?
Billions of dollars are spent each year on research and development of drugs for ailments that afflict people who can pay, which include conditions such as obesity, baldness, and ageing. Yet the world’s poor are left completely marginalized. Of the 1393 new medications introduced into the market between 1975 and 1999, for example, only 13 (or 1%) were for the treatment of tropical diseases. Only 10% of global health research is devoted to diseases that account for 90% of the global disease burden, diseases that desperately need new drugs.
The lack of R&D for new therapeutic tools for these neglected diseases is astonishing. These diseases afflict only the impoverished in developing countries, and do not present a lucrative market for the pharmaceutical industry, which follows a strict market logic: No profit, no investment.
Apathetic public authorities and disinterested private laboratories
The lack of interest from the profit-driven private sector has not been compensated by the public sector, whose primary responsibility is to provide for the basic needs of its population: food, shelter, health... Instead, the attention given to R&D for diseases in developing countries by the public sector is minimal and public research budgets are in steady decline. The public sector needs to increase investment in research and development of field-relevant health tools for patients suffering from neglected diseases.
Research institutes and an NGO team up
For 30 years, MSF has directly witnessed and continues to witness the human cost of the lack of drugs for these neglected diseases and has raised its voice against this inequity. The Pasteur Institute invests heavily in biological research on infectious diseases. The WHO set up its Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases to find solutions to public health problems related to 10 neglected infectious diseases that affect poor and marginalized populations. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation dedicates its resources to medical research and development. The Indian Council for Medical Research sponsors and coordinates medical research in India. The Malaysian Ministry of Health is dedicated to building partnerships for health.
Faced with the gravity the problem of lack of R&D in drugs for neglected diseases, the absence of public engagement, and private sector response, these institutions are assuming part of the responsibility of finding a sustainable, innovative solution to the problem.
They are creating an independent, needs-driven, not-for-profit entity, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), with proactive involvement of the public sector, to address the unmet needs of patients suffering from neglected diseases. They will do this primarily via research into and development of appropriate health tools and also by emphasizing the importance of public responsibility in providing equitable access to these tools. The DNDi will become a legal entity by July 2003.