Europe failing to respond to global TB threat
MSF report reveals insufficient and badly designed funding for research
Brussels – 12 November 2008 – New analysis from international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) shows how the European Commission is failing to pay its fair share towards discovering and developing new tuberculosis (TB) vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.
MSF is calling on the European Commission to increase its funding five fold into research for medical tools to fight TB in the face of a global epidemic that claims 1.7 million lives a year.
“Because the tests and drugs we use today aren’t anything like effective enough, MSF teams responding to the epidemic in Africa and Asia are faced with an almost impossible task,” said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. “We desperately need new vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for TB. This will only happen with more research.”
This is ever more urgent given TB’s rapid spread among people living with HIV and the rise of drug-resistant strains of the disease which do not respond to many of the commonly used treatments.
On a global scale, around 1.45 billion euros needs to be spent on TB research and development (R&D). MSF estimates that the European Union’s (EU) fair contribution would be 409 million euros a year. But MSF’s report shows that the European Commission spent a mere 18.7 million euros on TB R&D in 2007.
“Europe’s responsibility here is clear,” said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer. “Countries right on Europe’s doorstep – and even within the European Union – are struggling against resistant strains of the disease. But the research budgets remain pitifully low. Tuberculosis is knocking loudly on the door, but the European Commission is playing deaf.”
And member states are not making up the shortfall. An earlier MSF analysis found that Germany, the EU’s largest economy, was only contributing 7.5 million euros in 2007. “The European Commission cannot pass the buck on to the member states and vice versa”, said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer.
MSF’s analysis also shows how the European Commission (EC) funding is badly tailored to suit the needs of developers of vaccines, drugs and tests. The EC largely ignores new alternatives to the traditional patent-based research model, such as non-profit partnerships and prize funds. By eliminating the need for high drug prices to recover research and development costs, these innovative approaches could overcome the neglect of research into diseases that do not attract sufficient investment from industry, such as tuberculosis.
While it focuses on TB, MSF’s analysis also looked at other diseases: in 2007, only 17.1 million euros were spent on research and development for malaria. Not a single euro went into research for other neglected tropical diseases such as Leishmaniasis or Chagas, although these affect millions of people in developing countries.
MSF treats almost 30,000 people with tuberculosis in 39 countries worldwide.
NOTE TO EDITORS:
The report entitled “Cough up for TB! - The Underfunding of Research for Tuberculosis and Other Neglected Diseases by the European Commission” is being released in the run-up to a EC conference on poverty-related diseases in Brussels on 13 and 14 November 2008.
<media 2190 - cw_details>To download the report click here</media>
For more information, please contact:
Stephan Grosse Rueschkamp, Médecins Sans Frontières, +41 79 293 02 70
HomeMedia RoomPress ReleasesMSF welcomes UNITAID patent pool endorsementWHO Experts Raise Antiquated Nutrition Standards –WHO Experts Raise Antiquated Nutrition Standards –
Major implications for millions of malnourished children
Geneva – 6th October 2008 – After decades of neglect and poor standards for nutrition programmes the international nutrition community has put forth a clear set of principles to reduce deaths in moderately malnourished children. These new standards could positively impact 55 million moderately malnourished children worldwide, but only if they are translated into more effective food programmes.
After a week long meeting World Health Organisation (WHO) experts have just agreed that animal source food, such as dairy products, is the first and most effective choice to treat moderately malnourished children. According to the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), this new standard can significantly reduce child deaths. But the impact of these new rules will depend on the creation of new initiatives to support and fund programmes.
Currently, food programmes targeted at moderately malnourished children are mainly cereal-based and lack many of the nutrients young children need.
"Fortified blended flours based on wheat or corn plus soy that are so widely used no longer meet the new minimum criteria that the WHO experts have just set for young kids", said Christophe Fournier, President of the MSF International Council. "With everyone now agreeing that malnutrition in children needs to be treated with animal source food this should be the beginning of the end of providing poor quality diet to malnourished, vulnerable children."
In the areas most devastated by malnutrition, such as South Asia, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa, no other condition contributes more to death and illness in children.
The newly recommended animal source foods will make nutrition programmes for children much more expensive. MSF estimates that it will cost 3.5 billion euros annually to adequately address moderate malnutrition worldwide.
"National governments and donors need to urgently put new policies and funding in place to implement these new standards", says Christophe Fournier. "Not doing so would be endorsing double standards in which we would continue to give food aid that we would not feed to our own children."
MSF has recently made it a policy to treat all malnourished children with at least some animal source food and has begun to implement this strategy in all its nutrition programmes worldwide. In 2006 and 2007 the organisation has treated over 150,000 malnourished children in 22 countries with therapeutic and supplemental food.
The WHO experts meeting for "The Dietary Management of Moderate Malnutrition" was held in Geneva from 30 September - 3 October 2008.
For more information, please contact:
Stephan Grosse Rueschkamp, Médecins Sans Frontières, +41 79 293 02 70
