R&D Pharmaceutical Industry committed to improving health in Africa

The research-based pharmaceutical companies have long played a key role in international aid partnerships to improve health in Africa. Not only do they supply the latest medicines for diseases like HIV/ AIDS at cost and help African companies to manufacture them locally, they also donate others for tropical diseases in huge quantities. Furthermore, they also run numerous training programs for medical staff and public education campaigns. Their actions touch and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Research-based pharmaceutical companies are increasingly active in the development of new medicines and vaccines for tuberculosis, malaria, worm infestations and other tropical poverty-related diseases. Equally, research into HIV/AIDS remains a high priority for the pharmaceutical industry.

The upcoming G8 summit brings a welcome focus on improving health in Africa. The biggest obstacle to this is lack of health care infrastructure and trained personnel in Africa. The research-based pharmaceutical industry therefore hopes that the G8 nations will make available more funding to help African countries to strengthen their healthcare infrastructure. They should also look at strengthening measures to help those countries to retain trained healthcare staff. For example, whereas the WHO recommends a minimum standard of 20 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants, Malawi has just two, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. The G8 should also encourage African governments to play their part too; for example, so far, only one African country has met the African Union's Maputo Declaration target of allocating 15% of government expenditure to healthcare. A challenge of this magnitude can only be effectively addressed by a very broad and committed partnership, bringing together governments in developed and developing countries, intergovernmental agencies, NGOs and the private sector.

Accelerating Access Initiative

To make high quality, new HIV/AIDS medicines available on a sustainable basis to infected individuals in African and other developing countries, the original manufacturers established the Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI) in 2000. In this initiative, anti-retroviral medicines (ARVs) are supplied to these countries on a "no profit, no loss" basis. Now reaching more than 800,000 patients worldwide and more than 460,000 in Africa, the AAI supplies more than 40 percent of all people receiving ARV therapy in developing countries worldwide.

However, the pharmaceutical companies are not just active in the field of HIV/AIDS, they are active in partnerships addressing a wide range of health challenges, including tuberculosis and malaria, tropical diseases such as Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, leprosy, lymphatic filiariasis, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis and sleeping sickness. The industry's commitment is long term: 2007 marks the 20th anniversary of the Mectizan Donation Program, where the sponsoring company has committed to donate this medicine for as long as it takes to eradicate river blindness.

According to an IFPMA study, validated by the London School of Economics, between 2000 and 2005, its member companies made available 539 million healthcare interventions, sufficient to reach two out of three people in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a conservative valuation using wholesale prices, these contributions were worth USD 4.4 billion.

Core expertise: R&D

"Nevertheless", as Dr. Dr. Andreas Barner, Chairman of the VFA stated recently, "our specific core expertise lies in the development of new pharmaceuticals and making them available to patients."

AIDS has the highest priority. There is no other disease for which the pharmaceutical companies have developed more drugs since 1985: more than 20 ARVs, and about 60 drugs against AIDS-related infections. In the pipeline, there are a further 34 ARVs and 40 drugs against AIDS-related infections. The companies are working on an extension of available treatments for children and on 19 candidate vaccines. In the history of diseases, rarely has such a large and impressively successful armory of medicines been made available in such a short period of time. Rarely has the industry had such a life-prolonging impact on so many patients.

New drugs for malaria and tuberculosis

Research-based pharmaceutical companies are also working on 17 new drugs for tuberculosis, 18 against malaria and some vaccines for these diseases. More than 40 pharmaceutical research projects are also directed at worm infestations and other tropical poverty-related diseases. In many cases, the companies collaborate as part of public-private partnerships with other organizations and institutions, sharing the costs and usage rights for the developed pharmaceuticals.

Also earlier in 2007 several governments have for the first time supported the development of a new medicine - an Africa-specific vaccine against pneumonia and meningitis - based on an advance market commitment. According to Barner this is "an interesting funding approach, because public funds only have to be paid if the project is successful".

Patents

Furthermore, there are considerable misunderstandings regarding the role of patents in the health situation in the Developing World: Patents safeguard intellectual property; without them, inventors could lose interest in continued research efforts and lose the fruits of their labor to any competitor. Without the research of pharmaceutical companies in the past 20 years, in all likelihood, no drugs to fight HIV would have become available. This would have been disastrous. Similarly, current and future health care problems will only be solved if companies can afford to do research, i.e. when its results lead to patent-protected drugs. Patents are not the obstacle to access to medicines for infectious diseases in Africa, as companies recognize that the prices they charge for the resulting medicines need to be adapted according to the market concerned - hence, the no profit prices they charge for ARVs in Africa.

Most of the pharmaceuticals needed in developing countries have long been patent-free anyway. However, the absence of patents for these medicines has not resulted in them reaching the majority of patients. It is erroneous to assume that health problems can only be solved simply by breaking patents.

More meaningful than such measures would be the involvement of the expertise of the research-based pharmaceutical companies in additional health programs and also to invest in a solid health care infrastructure. "Because", as Barner stated in a recent press conference, "what good are pharmaceuticals, if there are neither physicians nor a pharmacy system locally?"

Click here for info material from our press conference of May 31, 2007 (partly in English)

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