Europe failing to respond to global TB threat

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

WHO meeting has potential to impact millions of malnourished children

 
29 September 2008, Geneva—A World Health Organisation meeting to develop new recommendations for the treatment of malnutrition will have a far-reaching impact on the quality of food aid and nutrition programmes for infants and young children, according to the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

MSF called on WHO experts to take this opportunity to raise the standards of food aid and malnutrition programmes.

In the areas most chronically devastated by malnutrition, such as South Asia, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa, many families cannot afford access to nutritious food and must survive on cereal porridges that are missing many essential nutrients. However, food aid provided today by international agencies or donors is also mainly cereal-based. These do not include animal source foods such as milk, which contain many of the nutrients young children need.

“We would not provide our own children only cereal porridge, why do we accept a double standard in food aid?” asked Dr. von Schoen-Angerer, Executive Director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “It would be a tragedy not to seize on this opportunity to raise the nutritional standards of food aid and national programming to include animal source food.”

No other condition contributes more to death and illness in children than malnutrition, the underlying cause of death of more than 3.5 million children under five every year in developing countries.  Yet programmes to prevent children from falling into the most terminal stages of malnutrition have barely changed for the last 30 years.

“MSF has made it a policy to treat malnourished children with at least some animal source food and we are now working toward more comprehensive implementation,” said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer. “Hopefully a clear recommendation from these experts, brought together by the WHO, will lead to a change to dramatically reduce unnecessary deaths from malnutrition.”

The UN already has clear recommendations for treating severe acute malnutrition, but only 5% of children in need receive treatment. MSF believes the challenge is to reach young children with high-value, nutritious food before they become dangerously ill.

The WHO experts meeting for “The Dietary Management of Moderate Malnutrition” takes place in Geneva from 30 September – 3 October.

MSF has treated over 150,000 malnourished children in 2006 and 2007 in 22 countries with therapeutic and supplemental food.

For more information, contact: Daniel Berman, Medecins Sans Frontieres(+41 7929 302 70)  (+33 6 32 35 3754)