PHA-Exchange> FW: MSF letter to WHO re Mexico summit

[WGNRR]

I am forwarding a message from HAI-Europe that related to the Mexico Summit. 
Please feel free to follow up and forward the message accordingly. 

Regards, 
Nadia van der Linde
Coordinator Women's Access to Health Campaign

WGNRR Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights
RMMDR Red Mundial de Mujeres por los Derechos Reproductivos
RMFDR	Réseau Mondial des Femmes pour les Droits sur la Reproduction


Dear members,
Please find below a message from Ellen t Hoen at the MSF Paris office.
Please contact Ellen if you would like to receive a copy of the official letter, or the briefing document in due course.
Kind regards,
Rose de Groot
..

Dear friends,


Please find below a letter we sent on Friday 28 October to Dr Lee of the
WHO about the Mexico Summit on Health research and the fact that WHO is
giving not enough attention to the lack of essential research and
development. We are trying to raise the issue in Mexico. Feel free to pass
this letter on to your contacts. It may in particular be useful to show it
to governement officials involved in R&D and possibly planning to go to
Mexico. Feel also free to use the letter as a basis for your own letter.

Closer to the meeting date we will send you our briefing document we are
preparing for the meeting.
Ellen


Dr Jong-wook Lee
Director General
World Health Organization
20 Avenue Appia
CH 1211 Geneva 27
Switzerland
Fax: 41 22 791 41 99
E-mail: leej at who.int



Paris, 28 October, 2004



Re: Ministerial Summit on Health Research: Bridging the Know-Do Divide to
Achieve the MDGs, Mexico City, November 16th-20th 2004.


Dear Dr Lee,

On November 16th-20th 2004 you will be convening in collaboration with the
government of Mexico the Ministerial Summit on Health Research. The theme
of the summit is Bridging the Know-Do Divide to Achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs).

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals set ambitious targets for
health, including reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and
combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other neglected diseases. But these goals
cannot be met using the medical tools currently available to health
professionals.

Mdecins Sans Fronti res (MSF) believes that WHO as co-organiser of the
Mexico Summit is missing an opportunity by not putting the need for health
needs-driven research and development firmly on the agenda.

We feel that urgent action is needed to develop new essential medicines,
vaccines and diagnostics, and to make them available at prices affordable
to people in developing countries and the health systems that serve them.

On 18th November your organisation will present a new WHO report titled
Priority Medicines for Europe and the World at a meeting in The Hague
organised by the Dutch presidency of the European Union. This report
outlines gaps in pharmaceutical R&D and calls for innovative responses to
market deficiencies, including measures to tackle the crisis on R&D for
neglected diseases.

We are surprised that WHO in the preparation of the Summit has not put more
emphasis on the need for the development of new and adapted tools.

Medicines research and development is almost exclusively confined to the
private sector, and is driven by prospects for profitable returns rather
than public health needs. Ninety per cent of all biomedical research and
60% of all the profits from pharmaceutical drugs are in the USA, while
Africa represents only 1% of drug sales worldwide. As a result of this
imbalance, in the last 25 years almost 1400 new medicines have been
developed of which only 1% were for tropical diseases  diseases that kill
hundreds of thousands of people every year, but which mainly affect people
in the developing world.

Among the examples of gaps in research and development into neglected
diseases are:
? Despite tuberculosis killing 2 million people each year and being on
the rise, existing drugs and diagnostics are antiquated and are not being
replaced:
o The fundamental diagnostic test for active tuberculosis (sputum smear
microscopy for acid-fast bacilli) was developed in 1882. It fails to detect
40-55% of those who have active TB and is unable to detect TB in most
HIV/TB co-infected patients and children.
o The bulk of the drugs presently used against TB were developed before
the 1950s, and patients must spend 6-8 months under treatment.
? Despite 95% of the 38 million people with HIV/AIDS coming from low
and middle income countries, the research and development agenda for
HIV/AIDS is concentrated on meeting the needs in high income countries,
causing major gaps in developing appropriate tools to combat the epidemic,
including:
o There is a lack of appropriate formulations of antiretroviral
medicines for the 2.5 million children with HIV, and the formulations which
do exist are costly and difficult to administer.
o There seems to be no identifiable progress, and even less commitment,
towards finding a therapeutic or preventative vaccine to combat AIDS.
? Despite sleeping sickness infecting 300,000 Africans each year, and
killing 60,000 of them, the fatal disease barely registers on the worlds
health R&D agenda:
o Sleeping sickness drugs are toxic or poorly adapted to resource-poor
settings: melarsoprol is arsenic-based and kills one in 20 patients treated
with it; eflornithine is complex to administer, requiring slow drug
infusions every six hours for 14 days.


MSF believes that the Mexico Ministerial Summit is an important opportunity
for WHO to set priorities for essential health R&D and to discus ways to
finance essential health R&D.

We urge you to take the lead in ensuring that these important matters are
at the heart of the discussions at the Summit.

Yours sincerely,



Dr Karim Laouabdia
Director
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Mdecins Sans Fronti res






Mdecins Sans Fronti res
Rue de Lausanne, 78
CP 116, 1211 Geneva 21
Tel: 41 22 849 84 05
Fax 41 22 849 84 04
E-mail : access at geneva.msf.org



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