Global appeal to focus on neglected diseases

A global appeal to focus research on developing new drugs, diagnostic tests, and vaccines for tropical diseases affecting poor people in developing countries has been launched by a group of scientists and non-governmental ­organisations.

Led by an independent foundation, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), the appeal was launched simultaneously in London, New Delhi, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro and was supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Oxfam.

The appeal asks governments to make neglected diseases a research priority, ensure sustained financial support, and reduce patent and regulatory barriers in order to increase research and development activities for neglected diseases.

"The current system needs a fundamental overhaul to address the fatal imbalance in the current research and development system properly," said Bernard Pecoul, executive director of DNDi.

Every day, over 35000 people die from infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and the more neglected diseases such as leishmaniasis, Chagas' disease, and sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis) yet there are no safe, affordable, effective and field adapted vaccines, diagnostic tests, and drugs to tackle them.

An estimated 12 million people in 88 countries have visceral leishmaniasis which is fatal if left untreated. Resistance to existing drugs is widespread, and the drugs are also toxic, difficult to use, and expensive.

Fifty five million people in sub-Saharan Africa are at risk of developing sleeping sickness, and at any one time up to 300000 people are infected.

The only way to diagnose the disease currently is by a lumbar puncture and only two drugs are available to treat it: one contains arsenic and kills one in 20 patients, and the other is an anti-cancer drug that can be given only by a six hour infusion.

Tido von Schoen-Angerer, coordinator of Research and Development for MSF's campaign for access to essential medicines, said: "We cannot accept that we must practise second class medicine just because our patients live in poor countries. We need a culture of medical innovation that meets the needs of neglected patients." He added: "Only strong international leadership will make this happen."

Global awareness about the need for research and development for neglected diseases has increased. Over the past five years, new public private partnerships and other initiatives such as DNDi, have been set up to develop new vaccines, diagnostic tests, and drugs for poverty related diseases.

Although each of these initiatives have made some specific contributions, the global effort to tackle neglected diseases remains patchy, dramatically underfunded, and relies heavily on a limited number of charity donors.

But there have been some scientific advances which have been "open access." Sir John Sulston, who shared the Nobel prize in physiology in 2002 for sequencing the human genome, signed up to the appeal and told the London audience that the human genome project could not have happened without clear political leadership and investment in the "public good."

He saw this latest development as a natural follow on from the success of the human genome project, which was, "an example of the general access to knowledge that is absolutely fundamental to progress in science and medicine." He continued, "Ownership [of knowledge] indeed has its place, but far more important is the huge substrate of communal, pre-competitive knowledge on which everything else is built."