WHO Inter Governmental Working Group - Addressing Unmet Developing World Health Needs: Sustainable, Practical Solutions

Medical News Today
November 12, 2007

The IFPMA supports the aim of the WHO Inter-Governmental Working Group (IGWG) to stimulate R&D for diseases which disproportionately affect developing countries. Despite the efforts of delegates and staff, the second IGWG meeting is ending with no agreed strategy and plan of action, and more work will be needed to complete this process before the next World Health Assembly in May 2008.

IFPMA Director General Dr. Harvey Bale said: "While all of us are disappointed, the issue of addressing unmet developing world health requires precise, pragmatic and sustainable solutions. Delegates have to sift through a wide range of policy proposals. Some advocate sustainable, practical solutions, built on the concrete improvements achieved so far, while others are largely theoretical or ideological in nature. During the course of this week, the effectiveness of existing practical approaches, such as the Special Program for Research & Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), sponsored by the UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank and WHO, has been highlighted, as has the need to reinforce them."

The R&D-based pharmaceutical industry shares delegates' concerns to achieve real improvements in health in poor populations in developing countries. The industry's determination to play an important role in improving global health is underlined by companies' extensive partnership programs to improve access to existing medicines and help strengthen health care systems, plus their growing contribution to R&D partnerships to address diseases of the developing world.(1)

The IFPMA underlines the need to ensure coherence in R&D for diseases of the developing world. While the industry is looking at ways to increase its involvement in this area, this could be encouraged through increased use of incentives such as orphan drug legislation and transferrable fast-track regulatory reviews of the sort introduced by the US FDA earlier this year. Increased funding will be certainly needed to take existing R&D projects into the more expensive clinical development stages and to build adequate pipelines for drug-resistant tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases. While expanded contributions through existing or new global funding bodies will undoubtedly help, the IFPMA also believes that suitably adapted innovative funding mechanisms could provide a useful complement, by creating a "pull" mechanism through the creation of adequate demand for future innovative medicines and vaccines to address unmet developing world health needs.

(1) See the IFPMA publication Partnerships to Build Healthier Societies in the Developing World"

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