The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) takes the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the …

MADRID, Feb. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --The fifth annual BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Development Cooperation category goes to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) for "developing and delivering new, effective and affordable treatments for poverty related diseases including Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, malaria and leishmaniasis affecting the world's most vulnerable populations," according to the award citation. DNDi, in the jury's judgment, "represents an institutional model of good practice, translating scientific research to development cooperation, through knowledge management and delivery of results to disadvantaged populations suffering from neglected diseases."

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130226/DA66850)

DNDi's Executive Director Bernard Pcoul expressed his delight "for the organization, but also for those suffering neglected diseases, who are what this initiative is all about."

"Despite the major progress achieved in global health over the last century, there remains a significant equity gap and many diseases affecting the poorest populations are still neglected," the citation said. "This represents shortcomings of market incentives resulting in only 10 percent of the world research expenditure being spent on diseases that account for 90 percent of the global health burden. Controlling and eliminating these diseases is a vital component of the strategy to alleviate poverty."

"A neglected disease is one that affects many people, but whose victims who do not constitute a lucrative market and therefore fail to attract private-sector investment. They are also diseases which kill or which, like sleeping sickness, prevent their young sufferers from working. And this imposes a heavy economic as well as personal burden on families and communities. In places where these conditions are widely prevalent, economic development is seriously impaired," Pcoul said.

It is estimated that more than a billion people almost one in six of the world's inhabitants are infected with one of the 17 diseases listed by the WHO as neglected tropical diseases, and, of this number, 500 million are children. These conditions moreover cause half a million deaths a year. And if we include other poverty related diseases like malaria, the affected population swells to three billion.

The awardee organization is a Product Development Partnership (PDP), a model which, the jury affirms, has proved its effectiveness over the last ten years: "It has successfully worked with academia, industry, NGOs and governments around the world, to develop and implement six new drugs against malaria, Chagas, sleeping sickness, and leishmaniasis. These diseases potentially affect more than 3 billion people. Some of their new products have been registered in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and, as an example, over 150 million doses of their antimalarial drugs have already been delivered."

Drugs for Neglected Diseases is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2003 on the combined initiative of seven public and private institutions: Mdecins Sans Frontires/Doctors Without Borders, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Malaysian Ministry of Health, France's Institut Pasteur, Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), and the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization.

A 120-strong team working out of its offices in Switzerland, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, India, Malaysia, the United States and Japan, coordinate a partnership network of around 600 engaged individuals who liaise with the public and private institutions involved in each project.

Its mission is to discover and develop new treatments for neglected diseases and other poverty related conditions, and to ensure that patients in the most vulnerable countries enjoy equitable access to the results. In view of the circumstances of this target public, the "ideal" treatment should be oral, safe, effective, low cost, and short course. "Diagnosis should be simple," Pcoul points out, "while the idea that treatments should preferably be oral and short course is so patients do not have to travel for hours or even days to have the drug administered in a hospital center."

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The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) takes the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the ...