[e-drug] Mexico Summit on Health Research -- press coverage

["Sean Healey" <Sean.HEALY@geneva.msf.org>]

E-DRUG: Mexico Summit on Health Research -- press coverage
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[Some press reports from the Mexico summit, where the World tries to identify ways to get better research for health problems. WB]

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 ? Last updated 10:36 p.m. PT

Officials talk diseases at health summit

By MARK STEVENSON

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

MEXICO CITY -- International experts kicked off the first worldwide health
research summit Tuesday in a desperate bid to focus attention on the
so-called forgotten diseases - illnesses of the poor that account for half
the world's deaths.

While there has been innovation in treating lifestyle diseases of the rich,
like obesity and cardiovascular problems, the five-day World Health
Organization's Summit on Health Research was tackling the lack of funding
and drug development for tropical and infectious diseases, most curable
even though they kill about 15 million people per year.

At the center of the agenda for researchers from 76 countries are things
like "the 10-90 gap": the fact that only 10 percent of the world's health
research budget goes to combat the most severe problems for 90 percent of
the population.

"The system has been very successful at developing drugs, diagnostics and
vaccines, but much less successful at getting them to people who need
them," said Tim Evans, the WHO's assistant director-general, said at the
opening ceremony of the summit. Evans estimated that two-thirds of current
child deaths could be prevented with existing technology.

He called for "a research agenda that is not dependent on the private
sector," noting that drug companies don't have much incentive to distribute
mosquito nets that could protect African children from malaria.

Dr. Bernard Pecoul of Medecins San Frontiers said rich nations and drug
companies should not only help make existing medications more accessible,
but also develop new medications for the diseases of the poor.

"I'm not criticizing the private sector. They're just not in a very good
position to set priorities," Pecoul said, noting there is more money
dedicated to developing new anti-cholesterol pills than selling
anti-malarial drugs.

"The corporations should open up their laboratories and libraries. It won't
earn them any money, but it will improve their image," said Pecoul. His
group, also known as Doctors without Borders, says there is a precedent for
such massive, government-directed research efforts, noting that half the
cost of developing anti-HIV drugs came from public coffers, not private
companies.

But, as the Medecins statement noted, "if HIV/AIDS had hit poor countries
only, patients would probably still be waiting for the first
anti-retroviral to be developed."

There is a trend of the world seemingly losing interest in deadly diseases
still common in the third world, but eradicated in developed countries.
Health workers treating tuberculosis said they still rely on a diagnostic
test developed in 1882.

A nurse treating the deadly tsetse fly-borne disease known as sleeping
sickness said doctors in Africa still rely on an arsenic-based drug in use
since 1949 that burns patient's veins and kills one in twenty of them.

That, despite the fact that world health research funding has risen to $106
billion annually.

"There is still a massive gap in funding for health problems that affect
low- and middle-income countries," Evans said. For example, of about 1
million health research papers listed on scientific data bases, 42 percent
are U.S. or Canadian, 47 percent from Europe or other developed nations,
and only 11 percent of such studies are done in the less-developed world.

Crises like the SARS virus or avian flu provide an example of quick
coordination between developed and developing nations, and massive research
and investment in a short time.

But while SARS did serve as a model for sharing health information with
developing nations in Southeast Asia, it also received attention mainly
because it quickly spread to developed nations like Canada - something
tuberculosis or malaria won't do.



NGO: Poor don't benefit from research

Most drug research goes to finding cures to the ailments found in developed
nations, says Midicins Sans Frontihres.

BY MICHAEL O?BOYLE/The Herald Mexico

November 17, 2004

The current system for health research is failing to bring benefits to the
world's poor, said representatives from the medical humanitarian
organization Midicins Sans Frontihres on Tuesday.

"Today's research and development 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," said Ellen 't Hoen, a
MSF campaigner, at a press conference on the opening day of a World Health
Organization summit being held in Mexico City this week.

While the summit will focus on improving the research of health care
systems how to apply existing medicines and technologies in the most cost
effective ways 't Hoen said developed nations cannot ignore their
responsibility to fund drug research for the world's "neglected diseases."
Most drug research is focused on finding cures to the ailments common in
the lucrative markets of the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, diseases
such as malaria that afflict only poor populations have been mostly ignored
by drug companies.

Of the nearly 1,400 new drugs developed between 1975 and 1999, only 16 were
for tropical diseases and tuberculosis, conditions that account for more
than 10 percent of global illnesses, according to MSF.

As a consequence of the lack of new research, the treatment of neglected
diseases relies on old, often highly toxic, medicines.

Despite a global increase in cases of TB, diagnosis of the disease still
relies on methods dating from 1882 while treatment depends on drugs
developed 40 to 60 years ago.

Virginia Morrison, an MSF nurse working in Angola, said health workers in
the field see every day the suffering caused by the lack of new drugs.

Morrison said she only had two drugs to work with in treating severe
infections of sleeping sickness, which afflicts an estimated 500,000 people
a year and kills 60,000.

One of the drugs "is a horrible 55-year-old drug which burns the veins and
kills one in 20 patients" and the other is ill-adapted for field conditions
in Africa, Morrison said.

"Our patients are sometimes more afraid of dying from the treatment than of
dying from the disease," she said. "Having only these options is
unacceptable medical practice."

"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."
Dr. Bernard Pecoul, head of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative
(DNDi) criticized both the United States and the European Commission for
failing to fund research for the diseases that don't interest
pharmaceutical companies.

"There needs to be a shift in political agendas," Pecoul said.

More than 40 percent of the world's total spending on health research is
provided by the public sector, mostly from the United States and Europe,
according to a report by the Global Forum for Health Research that is
hosting a parallel conference to the ministers summit.

But 't Hoen said public research has become "contaminated by market driven
logic," noting that public funds are used mostly to research the same
diseases that interest the private sector.

She said new schemes had to be developed to redirect public research funds
toward neglected diseases.

"The WHO needs to take the leadership on this, you can't just keep setting
goals without saying how you are going to achieve them," said 't Hoen. "We
need to look setting up a radically different system to set priorities."




World Health Leaders Call for New Research Goals

Tue 16 November, 2004 22:30

 By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Global health leaders meeting in Mexico this week
want nations of the world to spend more on medical research, not only to
develop new cures but to make those now on the market available to the
poor.

Existing tools as simple as mosquito nets can cut deep into massive health
problems such as malaria in developing nations, but research is needed to
find ways to best use them, organizers of a summit for health research said
at the start of the four-day event in Mexico City on Tuesday.

"The outlook is bleak (without such research) in terms of reaching health
gains that we know are possible," Dr. Tim Evans, assistant director-general
of the World Health Organization, told a news conference.

Health ministers from 70 countries, joined by scientists, international
leaders and private industry, will reiterate a call for governments to
dedicate 2 percent of their health budgets to medical research, according
to a draft of a declaration expected to be issued later in the week.

Funding for medical research is rising, and the number of public-private
partnerships to develop new drugs has increased dramatically, providing
promise for future treatments.

Yet, hundreds of thousands of women die every year in pregnancy, most of
them in developing nations, from conditions that are often easily treatable
or preventable.

HALF OF DEATHS EASILY PREVENTABLE

While such long-standing problems persist, poor populations are also
ravaged by newer diseases like AIDS and new pandemic infections emerge at a
rate of about one a year.

In a report this month the World Health Organization said more effective
research could prevent half the world's deaths with simple and
cost-effective methods.

For example, mosquito nets could dramatically reduce children's deaths from
malaria in some African nations, but a small minority of children now have
then, Evans said. Local authorities need programs to deliver them
universally.

One district in Tanzania reduced child mortality by 40 percent simply by
making a local study of health problems and reallocating its health budget
of about $2 per person accordingly, he said.

The independent humanitarian medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres,
or MSF, said on Tuesday that despite brave talk, health leaders need to
take more drastic steps to focus medical research on people suffering from
"neglected diseases" in poor countries.

"The current system is failing people in developing countries in a number
of ways," said Ellen Hoen, who runs the MSF campaign for access to
essential medicines.

MSF experts singled out diseases including malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and
sleeping sickness that are not being adequately treated in developing
countries.

In the case of sleeping sickness, a disease that causes madness and then
death and which is prevalent in Africa and carried by the tsetse fly,
treatments being used are half a century old.

"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," said Virginia Morrison, an MSF nurse working in
Angola.


****************************************
Sean Healy
Information Officer
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Midecins Sans Frontihres
Geneva, Switzerland
tel ++41-22-8498 401
fax ++41-22-8498 404
mobile tel ++41-79-239 9271
sean.healy@geneva.msf.org
www.accessmed-msf.org