Europe failing to respond to global TB threat
Europe failing to respond to global TB threat
MSF report reveals insufficient and badly designed funding for research
Brussels – 12 November 2008 – New analysis from international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) shows how the European Commission is failing to pay its fair share towards discovering and developing new tuberculosis (TB) vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.
MSF is calling on the European Commission to increase its funding five fold into research for medical tools to fight TB in the face of a global epidemic that claims 1.7 million lives a year.
“Because the tests and drugs we use today aren’t anything like effective enough, MSF teams responding to the epidemic in Africa and Asia are faced with an almost impossible task,” said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. “We desperately need new vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for TB. This will only happen with more research.”
This is ever more urgent given TB’s rapid spread among people living with HIV and the rise of drug-resistant strains of the disease which do not respond to many of the commonly used treatments.
On a global scale, around 1.45 billion euros needs to be spent on TB research and development (R&D). MSF estimates that the European Union’s (EU) fair contribution would be 409 million euros a year. But MSF’s report shows that the European Commission spent a mere 18.7 million euros on TB R&D in 2007.
“Europe’s responsibility here is clear,” said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer. “Countries right on Europe’s doorstep – and even within the European Union – are struggling against resistant strains of the disease. But the research budgets remain pitifully low. Tuberculosis is knocking loudly on the door, but the European Commission is playing deaf.”
And member states are not making up the shortfall. An earlier MSF analysis found that Germany, the EU’s largest economy, was only contributing 7.5 million euros in 2007. “The European Commission cannot pass the buck on to the member states and vice versa”, said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer.
MSF’s analysis also shows how the European Commission (EC) funding is badly tailored to suit the needs of developers of vaccines, drugs and tests. The EC largely ignores new alternatives to the traditional patent-based research model, such as non-profit partnerships and prize funds. By eliminating the need for high drug prices to recover research and development costs, these innovative approaches could overcome the neglect of research into diseases that do not attract sufficient investment from industry, such as tuberculosis.
While it focuses on TB, MSF’s analysis also looked at other diseases: in 2007, only 17.1 million euros were spent on research and development for malaria. Not a single euro went into research for other neglected tropical diseases such as Leishmaniasis or Chagas, although these affect millions of people in developing countries.
MSF treats almost 30,000 people with tuberculosis in 39 countries worldwide.
NOTE TO EDITORS:
The report entitled “Cough up for TB! - The Underfunding of Research for Tuberculosis and Other Neglected Diseases by the European Commission” is being released in the run-up to a EC conference on poverty-related diseases in Brussels on 13 and 14 November 2008.
<media 2190 - cw_details>To download the report click here</media>
For more information, please contact:
Stephan Grosse Rueschkamp, Médecins Sans Frontières, +41 79 293 02 70
MSF welcomes UNITAID patent pool endorsement
Geneva 9th July 2008 - International humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes the decision by UNITAID’s Executive Board to take further steps towards establishing a patent pool* for medicines, in order to provide people in low- and middle-income countries with increased access to more appropriate and lower-priced medicines.
“UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done - this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation”, said Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at MSF’s Access Campaign. “Whether this works or not now depends on the willingness of patent holders to share, in exchange for royalties, the relevant patent rights in the pool.”
“We need to find ways to get new drug prices down,” said Dr. Selina Lo, Medical Coordinator at MSF’s Access Campaign. “Today we pay at best between US$613 and $1,033 for the newer WHO-recommended regimen for first-line AIDS treatment. This is a seven to twelve-fold increase compared to older first-line treatments which are now available for $87 for one patient’s yearly treatment. As we’ve seen with the older antiretrovirals to treat AIDS, increased competition is the best way to do that – a patent pool can foster this competition.”
“Patent pools also open up the possibility of developing more fixed-dose combinations, which combine several drugs into one pill,” said Ellen ‘t Hoen. “Patents on the individual components of a fixed-dose combination can stand in the way of the development and production of an FDC. A patent pool gets round that by offering producers a one-stop-shop for licences from the different intellectual property owners. Generic companies obtain licences against the payment of royalties that will enable them to put the different components of a fixed-dose combination together. The same is true for the development of more child-friendly medicines.”
* A patent pool is a mechanism whereby a number of patents held by different entities, such as companies, universities or research institutes, are made available to others for production or further development - for example of paediatric formulations or fixed-dose formulations. The patent holders receive royalties that are paid by those who use the patents. The pool manages the licences, the negotiations with patent holders and the receipt and payment of royalties.
A patent pool can help speed up the availability of generic versions of new medicines because the development can start well before the 20 year patent term runs out. At the same time, it will help to increase the size of the potential market because companies that produce drugs under licence from the patent pool will be able to export them to any of the countries designated by the pool’s licences.
Patent pools are part of World Health Organization’s recently-adopted Global Strategy on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property to help increase access to medicines.
http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/A61/A61_R21-en.pdf
