The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7338 p227
26 February 2005

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Call for initiative to trigger investment in neglected diseases

An international treaty on a global programme of drug research should be drawn up in an attempt to trigger investment in neglected disease, a campaign group suggested this week.

The initiative, which should be led by the World Health Organization, would prioritise research and development according to public health need, it said. The suggestion comes from members of the Neglected Diseases Group — an independent interdisciplinary working group set up by the medical relief agency Médecins sans Frontières.

The group said it wanted to see a move away from a research and development programme dominated by drug prices and patent agreements to one based on health needs.

Writing in the February issue of Plos [Public Library of Science] Medicine the authors say: “The idea is to shift the discourse from trade to health. The treaty — focused directly on R&D rather than patent rights or drug prices — would address the global management of publicly funded health R&D.”

The suggestion for an international R&D programme based on health need was also raised last week by the chairman of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, Sir Michael Rawlins. Writing in the BMJ (2005:330:376) he draws attention to the decision taken last November by the EU council to commission the WHO to develop a research agenda for the EU based on “public health needs for priority medicines” (PJ, 27 November 2004, p776).

“The pharmaceutical industry is a business and needs to provide its shareholders with a return on their investment,” Professor Rawlins says. “Many neglected diseases are unlikely to do this and investment represents a great commercial risk. The industry will continue to play a major part in the discovery and development of drugs, but we need much greater pluralism in both the funding and discovery of novel treatments,” he adds.

A spokesman for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said that a list of R&D based on public health need would be useful, but that it would be a question of how prescriptive the list would be. “If it’s going to be a question of ‘we will force you to do this’, I think that is where we would part company,” he said.