MSF Accessmed : Press clips

Africa Science News: Mixed reaction as WHO's IP meet ends

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:47:00 +0200

The WHO negotiations on public health, intellectual property and innovation ended last Saturday...

IPW: WHO members inch towards consensus on IP, Innovation and Public Health

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:01:00 +0200

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) gathered this week to address innovation and...

Development Today: Opinion piece on Advance Market Commitment

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:37:00 +0200

Opinion piece on Advance Market Commitment set up by GAVI for the pneumococcal vaccine from the...

MSF response to WSJ on Thailand compulsory licences

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:26:00 +0100

MSF's Dr Buddhi Lokima responds to the Wall Street Journal on the issue of Thailand and compulsory...

BMJ: MSF calls for use of ready-to-use foods at Hanoi meeting

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:42:00 +0100

A charity is calling for greater use of nutrient dense ready to use foods (RUFs) at this week's...

The New York Times: Fighting Tuberculosis

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:27:00 +0100

The Campaign's director, Tido von Schoen-Angerer, responds to the WHO report on the spread of MDR...

New York Times Op-Editorial on Malnutrition

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:23:00 +0100

We have all seen the pictures on television and in magazines of emaciated children looking at us...

AfricanScienceNews.org: Call for increased efforts on TB drug research

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:13:00 +0100

Drug developers can speed up the development of urgently needed new tuberculosis drugs by adopting...

DPA: New Approach Needed for Drug Resistant TB

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:46:00 +0100

The international medical aid organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) on Tuesday backed calls...

Toronto Star: Neglected diseases kill poor

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:37:00 +0200

GENEVA—Diseases that kill millions of poor people every year are ignored by Western firms because drugs to combat them make no money, a new research body said as it was launched on Thursday.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) links the charity Medecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) with public health bodies from developing countries in a bid to plug a gaping hole between health research and global illness.

"A mere 10 per cent of the world's health research efforts go into diseases that account for 90 per cent of the global disease burden," DNDi said.

"Most neglected diseases ... almost exclusively affect people in developing countries who are too poor to pay for any kind of treatment," the group added in a launch statement.

"These patients are too deeply impoverished to constitute a market that can attract investment in drug research and development."

The initiative, backed by research institutes in Brazil, France, India, Kenya and Malaysia, plans to spend $250 million over the next 12 years developing drugs to fight illnesses such as sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.

Sleeping sickness has made a massive comeback in sub-Saharan Africa and left untreated, can be fatal.

Leishmaniasis, which destroys the immune system, is rife in rural areas of the Indian subcontinent and Chagas disease, found in South America, is caused by a blood-sucking bug that slowly eats away at the internal organs.

Together, they threaten 350 million people, but existing therapies are often painful and toxic — and decades old.

"Patients in developing countries are being forced to use drugs with failing efficacy and significant side-effects," Yves Champey, interim director of DNDi, said in a statement.

"They deserve a better deal. DNDi will mobilize scientific innovation to create new medicines for the world's most neglected patients," he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank are also supporting the initiative, which plans to develop drugs from existing compounds as well as fund and coordinate research to identify new drug prospects.