Sixteen Nobel laureates as well as doctors, scientists and charities called on Wednesday for a global plan to develop drugs to treat neglected diseases that are killing millions of the world’s poorest people.
Asking for a fund of $3 billion a year, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative said major drug firms did not put enough effort into potential cures for mega-killers like malaria and tuberculosis because medicines to fight them make no money.
“This is not a luxury. It is critical to the future of humankind,” human genome project pioneer John Sulston told a news conference, noting the “global and lethal consequences” of neglecting the problem.
“We have got to have a concerted effort. We have got to have collective leadership by governments,” the Nobel Prize winner added.
The world spends more than $100 billion per year on health research and drug development, but less than 10 percent is spent on 90 percent of the world’s health problems affecting the poor of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the campaigners said.
“There is an urgent need to correct the fatal imbalance of the current drug development model,” said campaign director Bernard Pecoul. “We are talking about 14 million deaths from infectious diseases each year.
Too many medicines were being developed by rich nations which could afford expensive and often complicated drug therapies that were either too costly or too complicated or both for nations struggling against poverty and disease epidemics.
Call on G8
Pecoul urged the leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations to take the lead by declaring war on developing country disease -- and supplying the weapons to fight it -- when they meet in Scotland next month.
And it was not just a matter of charity. There was a strong case of self-interest.
“Diseases are travelling globally as people travel globally,” said diagnostic specialist Helen Lee. “You have Medecins sans Frontiers. These are Diseases sans Frontiers.”
But throwing money at the problem was not the only answer.
The secretive pharmaceutical industry had to allow the free exchange of information on drugs in research and development to be taken up by others even if firms had shelved their own efforts due to the lack of profits in prospect.
Pecoul called for incentives to industry to open doors and persuade them to push forward development of drugs for diseases alien to the rich nations, and for governments in all countries -- not just the wealthy -- to take a leading role.
Noting the development of two anti-malarial drug treatments specifically aimed at the poor and uneducated which are expected to come to market next year, Pecoul said he was not calling for revolution but accelerated evolution.
And by raising public awareness of the problems and their consequences and showing concrete results, the campaign for the plan to raise public money for the neglected diseases hoped to provide the catalyst for the necessary change, he added.
