[Ip-health] Financial Express - Glamourless Diseases

[Mike Palmedo]

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=3D94190

Glamourless diseases - With commercial interests driving drug research,
diseases like kala-azar fail to attract funds

BANASREE PURKAYASTHA
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Financial Express

Even as billions of dollars pour in to find a cure for AIDS (Acquired
Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) and several lifestyle diseases, governments
and the medical community worldwide continue to be apathetic to the
millions of deaths caused by endemic diseases like kala-azar, sleeping
sickness or malaria. These so-called =91neglected diseases=92 have seen ver=
y
few new drugs coming up, with treatment systems confined to drugs
discovered in the early part of the 20th century.

=93At present, 90% of research and development for new drugs is focussed
on 10% of the population. For diseases that kill millions in developing
and least developed countries, very little research is carried out by
government-run R&D institutions, let alone private companies,=94 says
Bhawna Sharma, a representative of DNDi.

DNDi or Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, in association with its
partners like Medicins sans Frontieres, Institut Pasteur and Oxfam, has
launched a campaign to force governments to initiate the development of
safe, effective and affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for
neglected diseases.

Diseases like kala-azar, sleeping sickness, malaria and chagas primarily
affect people in least developed countries and developing countries, and
within them, the poorest sections of society, who can ill afford costly
drugs. As a result, pharma companies have no impetus to earmark funds
for research into these diseases.

Tuberculosis, which most people in the industrialised nations think is a
disease of the 20th century, eradicated along with smallpox, kills
around two million people each year =97 almost all of them in poor
countries. The escalating epidemic has seen a 20% rise in cases over the
last decade, largely due to the HIV pandemic. If TB is left unchecked,
the World Health Organisation estimates that in the next twenty years,
almost one billion people will become newly infected, 200 million will
develop the disease, and 35 million will die of TB.

Unfortunately, because TB disproportionately affects the poor, drug
companies do not find it an attractive market for drug development.
Virtually no new research is being conducted to develop new treatments,
apart from that conducted by TB Alliance.

=93R&D for new drugs is driven by global patenting systems like IPR and
TRIPS. The primary engine for innovation is profits which in turn put
these drugs out of reach of the common man. With no takers for these
expensive drugs combined with government=92s apathetic and skewed
policies, millions continue to die because of a lack of purchasing
power,=94 says Dr Amit Sengupta, a consultant physician and part of the
People=92s Health Movement in India.

=93Patents drive up the price of vital medicines and have failed to induce
R&D for the heath needs of millions of poor people in developing
countries,=94 says Samar Varma of Oxfam.

Even in the case of AIDS drugs, where multinational pharma companies
have promised low-priced drugs for poor countries in exchange for patent
rights, these have not worked efficiently.

=93That is why DNDi has proposed that R&D into neglected diseases should
be put in the public domain, so as to circumvent patent problems. We
want to put together collaborative research from around the globe. Most
of the R&D is conducted by government institutions, but again in the
global north the priorities are different. While there are a few R&D
institutions in the developing countries, mainly India, Brazil, South
Africa, China and Thailand, these countries need to come together to
exchange their databases,=94 says Dr Sengupta.

=93India has the infrastructure, capability and expertise to research and
develop drugs for neglected diseases of the world but it needs strong
political commitment if these resources are to be transformed into
tangible therapies, preventive and curative for patients,=94 said Dr CP
Thakur, former Union health minister, who has done a lot of research
work into kala-azar.

According to DNDi, higher levels of intellectual property rights have
not resulted in increased drug R&D for global health needs. Drugs for
neglected diseases are low priority for governments. They tend to
prioritise research with potential commercial applications instead.

=93Most of the drugs still used to treat neglected diseases were developed
in colonial times. These are often difficult to administer, and hard to
tolerate, several of them are becoming ineffective because of increasing
parasite resistance. More than a 1,000 new drugs were made available to
the public between 1975 and 1999, but only 16 of them are meant for
neglected diseases.=94