PHA-Exchange> UN HEALTH AGENCY EXPANDS PROGRAMME TO FIGHT NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES

[Claudio]

From: UNNews at un.org  via Vern Weitzel

UN HEALTH AGENCY EXPANDS PROGRAMME TO FIGHT NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES

Buoyed by its success in saving an estimated 110,000 people who would 
otherwise have died from
sleeping sickness over the past five years, the United Nations health agency 
today expanded its
programme to fight some of the most neglected tropical diseases that destroy 
the lives and health of
poor people.

This expansion is possible thanks to a renewed collaboration with 
sanofi-aventis, the world’s number
3 pharmaceutical company, which has agreed to donate medicines and financial 
support worth $25
million over five years to the UN World Health Organization
(<"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr54/en/index.html">WHO).

Sanofi-aventis will donate $5 million in drugs to treat sleeping sickness 
and a further $20 million
in financial support for the control of neglected tropical diseases, such as 
leishmaniasis, a skin
disease that leaves lifelong ugly scars, Buruli ulcer, which destroys the 
skin and soft tissues, and
the sometimes fatal Chagas disease, an insect-transmitted illness that 
attacks the heart,
oesophagus, colon and the peripheral nervous system.

  All four diseases are among the most neglected in the world. The people 
who suffer from them are
almost all poor inhabitants of remote, rural areas.

The new project will take a common approach to detecting, preventing and 
treating the diseases,
actively seeking out people who show early symptoms and giving them 
effective treatment before the
symptoms worsen.

Sanofi-aventis President Jean-François Dehecq said: “With this new 
programme, we hope to contribute
to saving many more lives and we are proud to be one of the major WHO 
collaborators to fight
neglected tropical diseases.”

Sanofi-aventis is the number 1 pharmaceutical company in France and in 
Europe.