Tropical diseases drug development

The inadequacy or nonexistence of health tools to combat tropical diseases is a key factor preventing effective control efforts. This was not always the case. During the first part of the twentieth century, tropical diseases were a concern of European colonial administrators because of their impact on territorial expansion diseases such as river blindness, sleeping sickness, and malaria incapacitated workers and limited exploitation of natural resources. This led to the establishment of the study of tropical medicine and the development of the European drug industry. But, as western interests withdrew, so did concern for tropical disease control (Janssens, Kivits, and Vuylsteke 1992). 

It is interesting to note that among 1393 new drugs developed between 1975 and 1999, only 1.1% (16 drugs) was for tropical and other diseases prevalent in developing countries (90). While one-third of the world population live on less than US 2/day, and occasionally without access to essential drugs (91), it is foreseeable that some may question... 

Doctors did not anticipate the development of drug-resistant malaria and tuberculosis. The emergence of Legionnaire s disease, Lyme disease, AIDS, Hantavirus, and Ebola virus was not anticipated. Most drug companies are still unwilling to tackle tropical diseases because they fear that the poor people afflicted with the diseases will not be able to pay for the drugs.12... 

Little work is done on drugs for major tropical diseases because the pharmaceutical industry fears that the persons who contract the illnesses will be too poor to purchase the drugs.63 However, some drug companies have sold drugs of questionable benefit in developing countries. 

Collaborative drug discovery projects in the public domain normally focus on neglected tropical diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, malaria, and leishmaniasis) due to the evident medical need, the reduced competition, and associated intellectual property burden. The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) [32] was the first to focus on malaria in a collaborative shion. MMV started in 1999 with initial funding (US 4 million) from the governments of Switzerland and the Netherlands, the UK Department for International Development, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

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