HEALTH: New Offensive Against Malaria

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Nov 4 1999 (IPS) - Japanese pharmaceutical companies are showing the way to other firms in the developed world by committing research resources to finding a more effective drug to combat malaria.

The 12 companies announced last week they would work in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO) as part of the latter’s “Roll Back Malaria Initiative.”

The commitment by the Japanese companies is “by far, the most ambitious joint project yet,” says WHO spokesman, Gregory Hartl.

The new alliance is a personal triumph for Gro Harlem Brundtland who took over the reins at WHO earlier this year. She has been making regular efforts to get the drugs industry more involved in the sphere of international public health.

The Japanese pharmaceutical industry has been successful in discovering new molecules of potential benefit in human medicine.

In most cases, however, such molecules have not been tested for activity against malaria parasites,” says Dr. Carlos Morel, director of WHO’s Programme on Tropical Diseases Research (TDR). This will be the first activity in the new venture.

WHO experts feel optimistic of results and are confident the successful discovery and development of a new class of antimalarial drug is “inevitable” because of the scale of new research.

Malaria, which kills one child every 30 seconds, is caused by four species of the plasmodium parasite carried by mosquitoes. The symptoms of its victims include fever, shivering and pain in the joints to comas, fits and low blood sugar levels. Cerebral malaria is the most severe form of the disease.

WHO studies reveal that its continued spread unchecked has become such a serious public health problem in the developing world that the death toll far exceeds the mortality rate from AIDS.

Currently it affects 90 countries, home to 40 percent of the world’s population, with communities in sub-Saharan Africa the most vulnerable.

Present estimates indicate that close to 300-500 million cases of malaria are detected each year with fatalities caused by the disease topping one million.

In Ethiopia for instance, 40 million people, of a total population of 60 million, are at risk of malaria. Health officials say that close to five million Ethiopians are infected with the disease every year.

Meanwhile in countries where malaria previously had been under control – such as Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Korea – it again has again become a menace.

The battle against malaria has taken on a new momentum since Brundtland began her tenure as head of WHO. Her efforts to engage pharmaceutical companies in research for an effective drug has been followed up with the launching of a “virtual” drugs company.

Called the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), this independent foundation will pool the resources of public health agencies and the private-sector to “create a unique mechanism for developing anti-malarial drugs which otherwise would never have seen the light of day,” according to a WHO statement.

Among the foundation’s initial cosponsors is the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA).

“The creation of the MMV (will) symbolise the start of a new era of partnership between the research-based pharmaceutical industry and WHO to bring about real improvements in world health,” says Lodewijk de Vink, IFPMA president.

These developments, however, come at a time when there has been growing criticism by public health activists about the manner in which drugs companies in the developed world have been abandoning research into diseases that have been ravaging communities elsewhere.

Of the 1,233 drugs that were licensed worldwide between 1975 and 1997, only 13 were for tropical diseases that mainly affect the developing world.

Furthermore, according to one critic, of these 13 drugs, “two were slight modifications of existing medicines, two were produced for the US military, and five were the outcome of veterinary research.”

That means drug companies which last year spent a total of 40 billion dollars on research, have in two decades, come up with only four medicines specifically for tropical disease.

Criticism has also come from such organisations as Medicines sans Frontiers (MSF), which won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for, among other efforts, its continued advocacy for easier access to drugs.

MSF has accused pharmaceutical companies of abandoning research and development of drugs desperately needed in the Third World.

James Orbinski, president of MSF, pointed to the dangers of such a situation continuing in a recent interview. “To leave this solely in the hands of the private sector and market forces means the situation only will get worse,” he opines.

He also is sceptical of any alliances between WHO and pharmaceutical companies. “They are tinkering on the margins,” he says.

Bruntland, however, thinks otherwise. The relationship that WHO has forged with the pharmaceutical industry is, in her estimation, the “first step to benefit an estimated 100 million people worldwide.”

And IFPMA director general Harvey Bale Jr. echoes this optimism: The changes in the WHO “could potentially make everybody a winner. It is up to all of us now to translate this potential into actions.”