[Ip-health] TR: Article of Ciro Mortella from Brazilian Pharma mentionning indirectly DNDi and ASMQ and questionning cost price ....

[MSF Michel Lotrowska]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Could you check if this has been released. I haven t seen it out although I
sent it last weekl



thanks



  _____

De : MSF Michel Lotrowska [mailto:access@msf.org.br]
Envoy=E9 : mercredi, 27. ao=FBt 2008 22:36
=C0 : 'ip-health@lists.essential.org'
Objet : Article of Ciro Mortella from Brazilian Pharma mentionning
indirectly DNDi and ASMQ and questionning cost price ....



This article came out in the newspaper =B0O Globo=B0 and is from the presid=
ent
of the Pharma Brazilian Federation. The =B0public laboratory =B0 mentioned =
is
Farmanguinhos and the drug is AS/MQ that has been developed with the
leadership of DNDi and Farmanguinhos as the main partner.

Ciro Mortella | O Globo 25th Aug 2008 (free translation)

Thirty years after the Alma-Ata Declaration, adopted at the International
Conference on Primary Health Care, whose goal was "Health for All by the
Year 2000", a third of the world's population still doesn't have access to
basic health services. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people suffer fro=
m
lack of food, drinking water, housing, sanitation and education.

The situation persists and it challenges the leadership and capacity of
authorities and experts as it involves a complex combination of political,
social, economic, scientific and technological factors. Global matters
require global solutions. In this category of matters is the expansion of
population access to medicines.

And the crucial point when discussing supplying medicines at "affordable
prices" is the funding sources for research and development (R & D) of
substances for treating diseases with high incidence in poor and rich
countries.

The costs involved in the different stages of R & D of a medicine are
estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. And the money should come fro=
m
somewhere: Public Authorities (i.e. the population), private companies
(shareholders and investors), etc.

Recently, a public laboratory announced the marketing of a new drug "at cos=
t
price". Indeed, the research of the product was paid by a consortium of
countries and non governmental organizations.

Such "at cost" price refers only to manufacturing costs.

If the drug had been entirely developed - from basic research to the last
phase of clinical research - its price would have been much higher.

To the economist Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor of the UN General Secretary
to the Millennium Development Goals, diseases such as malaria could be
overcome through worldwide coordinated investments. He admits, however, tha=
t
lack global funds for this goal be achieved.

While the international community does not reach a consensus on a wide pact
that sets funding sources, the pharmaceutical industry spends the high
investments required for the development of innovative molecules, which wil=
l
be later gotten back through the market price of these products.

Without the decisive industry contribution, the advocacy to control the AID=
S
epidemic would not have had the success it has achieved, in a process that
led to the creation of 88 medicines and that currently founds testing of 92
new substances.

In 2006, the global pharmaceutical industry invested more than US$ 75
billion in researching molecules to treat thousands of diseases such as
tuberculosis (19 substances), malaria (20), maternal and infant diseases
(219), diseases prevalent among the women (over 700), etc.

Besides the rhetoric and incipient projects, the fact is that the major
advances in drug synthesis in the last decades were the result of the pharm=
a
industry initiative, not from governments, international organizations or
NGOs.



--
Bethania
Cel.: 21 9965-8151

--