Companies Should Research Health Care Products For Use in Developing Nations

Improvements in health care and life sciences are an important source of gains in health and longevity globally. The development of innovative pharmaceutical products plays a critical role in ensuring these continued gains. To encourage the continued development of new drugs, economic incentives are essential. These incentives are principally provided through direct and indirect government funding, intellectual property laws, and other policies that favor innovation. Without such incentives, private corporations, which bring to market the vast majority of new drugs, would be less able to assume the risks and costs necessary to continue their research and development (R&D). In the United States, government action has focused on creating the environment that would best encourage further innovation and yield a constant flow of new and innovative medicines to the market. The goal has been to ensure that consumers would benefit both from technological breakthroughs and the competition that further innovation generates. The United States also relies on a strong generic pharmaceutical industry to create added competitive pressure to lower drug prices. Recent action by the Administration and Congress has accelerated the flow of generic medicines to the market for precisely that reason. By contrast, in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Malaria is a disease that affects nearly 600 million people and causes more than a million deaths a year, the most coming from children under five. This disease is regularly found in more than 100 countries around the world and affects 40% of the world’s population. It is most commonly transmitted by an infected Anopheles mosquito. The most deadly form of malaria is known as Plasmodium falciparum because almost all deaths from malaria are caused by this specific one. Some of the symptoms that are affiliated with this strand of malaria are the destruction of red blood cells along with complications with the kidneys, lungs, and brain. In more serious cases, it can cause permanent neurological effects and even death. As the Nobel Assembly said at the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, “Diseases caused by parasites have plagued humankind for a millennium and constitute a major global health problem. In particular, parasitic diseases affect the world’s poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing”. Youyou Tu, one of the winners of the prize, discovered Artemisinin, “a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria by killing the malaria parasites an early stage of their development.”

Globally, people’s health is improving. Since 1990, with a significant contribution from UK development programs, the number of children dying from preventable causes has fallen from around 12 million a year to around 7 million. In this period, the number of girls and women dying during pregnancy and childbirth has fallen from 543,000 a year to 287,000.Yet there is still much to be done. The poorest people in the world’s poorest countries suffer the most from ill health, and women suffer more than men. Much of this suffering could be prevented by using existing treatments and by applying the latest knowledge about what works. The challenge is to get these treatments to the people who need them the most - the poorest, the most marginalized, and those in fragile or post-conflict states. We want to speed up progress in improving people’s health.

In the United States, many diseases like the flu are treated easily by available drugs administered by pharmacies. However, in third world countries like Africa, medical supply is not affordable in environments festered with contaminated water supply and lack of food sources. Sub-Saharan Africa is plagued by many diseases, but the most common disease is Malaria. Malaria is a type of disease that is spread by the female mosquito of the genus Anopheles. An individual will start to experience high fevers and chills. If left untreated, the individual could possibly die (Heyneman, 2014). Antimalarial drugs are a type of treatment that can counteract this disease. Doxycycline is an antimalarial drug that is commonly used, however its

In the seventeenth century a group of Jesuits brought back tree back that had quinine in it from Peru. This proved to cure malaria and was a major step in malaria treatment. The complexity of the malaria parasite is astounding, as it has six separate cycles in which half occur in the mosquito and half occur in the human body. Due to this extremely complex life cycle, there is no easy way out to target one point, and to fully eradicate malaria the entire global population would have to be on anti-malarial pills for the entire life cycle of a mosquito.

Around 300-600 million people suffer from malaria each year, and over one million people die from this disease every year, mostly children younger than five. This disease is endemic to over 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the South Pacific, almost 40% of the world population. Malaria is caused by a parasite that is transferred by the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito. The most deadly form of malaria is known as Plasmodium falciparum because almost all deaths from malaria are caused by this specific one. In addition to being the deadliest form of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum destroys red blood cells along with causing complications with the kidneys, lungs, and brain. In more serious cases, it can cause permanent neurological effects and even death. As the Nobel Assembly said at the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, “Diseases caused by parasites have plagued humankind for a millennium and constitute a major global health problem. In particular, parasitic diseases affect the world’s poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing”. Youyou Tu, one of the winners of the prize, discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria by killing the malaria parasites an early stage of their development.

Profit in pharmaceutical industries is not possible without patents and without patents innovation, research and development of new life saving drugs and medicines suffers (Winestock and Cooper, 2001, p. 1). Without incentive Research and Development (R&D) cannot be done, and this incentive is provided by strong IPRs. According to Grabowski, H. (2002) the total cost of doing researching and developing new drug along with the costs of capital and failed R&D is more than US$400 million. In the absence of strong implementation of IPRs and R&D costs, investors will not be ready to invest in R&D.

Measures to control this epidemic disease are becoming less and less efficient, and more expensive. The increased risk of the illness linked to expansion projects in undeveloped areas, particularly in the Amazon basin and in Southeast Asia. The escalation of malaria cases is also interrelated to factors such as lack of health services, poor hygiene, increasing in political disruptions, unresolved armed conflicts, and accelerating effect on global warming. Additional possible causes of the spread of malaria also include the evolving resistance of the parasites that has build immunity to the current antimalarial drug treatments. On the other hand, with the rising trend of international traveling, malaria is now resurfaced again in developed countries. Countries such as the United State, England, Canada and many other well-developed nations where malaria has to make is appearance once again, where it has previously been eradicated. (Liu, Modrek, Gosling & Feachem. 2013)

Although there have been many years of research and planned measurements to control the outbreak of malaria, the realization of a malaria-free world remains an ongoing battle. The widespread of this disease continues to expand to different origins in the world. “An estimated two billion people (more than 40% of the world population) live in areas with malaria risk (MFI).” “The global annual incidence ranges between three to five hundred million clinical cases, with a death toll of between two to three million (Okenu).” “Malaria accounts for 10% of Africa’s disease burden, causing the greatest suffering and impoverishment among poor people, with pregnant women and children under five years of age, being the most vulnerable (Okenu).” This

Malaria is one of the most severe public health problems worldwide. It is the leading cause of death in many developing countries. Young children and pregnant woman are the groups that are the most affected by this disease. Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for causing over a million deaths each year and between 300-500 cases. In total, that is over 3.3 billion people who are at risk from malaria. This is almost half of the world’s population (World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report, 2013). Out of those

When it comes to small-molecule drugs specifically, the journey to eventually becoming an approved and marketed drug ready for the public is an exhausting and comprehensive odyssey which involves the following components: basic research, finding the medicine, initial testing, complex clinical trials involving human beings and then eventually hard-sought after approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (Corr & Williams, 2009). On average, the process generally takes a decade to a decade and a half, millions upon millions of dollars and the most ideal circumstances before the drug is approved this overall reason attributes to why drug discovery and development is one of the "drug discovery and development is widely recognized as one of the most financially risky endeavors in all of science and a major challenge for the biomedical industry. Much of this cost comes from failures, which account for 75 percent of the total research and development costs" (Corr & Williams, 2009). Corr and Williams are wise to point out that despite the fact that these failures are expensive and can chip away at morale, they still add to a collective body of knowledge on the process of disease: this knowledge is gained from carrying out research and clinical trials, even ones that fail (2009). One could even argue that the path to approval for biologics is even more arduous because they

In an effort to avoid drug resistance, the current recommendation of the World Health Organization is the use of two more anti-malaria drugs for the treatment of uncomplicated P. falciform malaria infections. In order to achieve the desired effect the drug combinations must have different modes of action. The formal name for this form of therapy is artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) (1). Artemisinin defines the group of drugs that have the most rapid action in the treatment of P. falciform malaria. The drug has been shown to eradicate both the resistant and susceptible stains P. falciform (2). The idea is use an artemisinin along with a drug from a different class to maximize the treatment outcomes (2).

To compete with generic treatments, multinational pharmaceutical companies are investing in promising start-ups offering new drugs and biological medicines, or biologics for chronic conditions. Another strategy: research focused on often-neglected “orphan” drugs for rare conditions.

A lot of money is put towards research and development – Last year alone AstraZeneca invested almost $59 billion for only five drugs to be approved. This meant that each drug technically cost them nearly $11.8 billion each. (Silverman, 2012)

Malaria is one of the most severe public health problems worldwide. It is a leading cause of death and disease in many developing countries, where young children and pregnant women are the groups most affected. According to the World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report 2013 and the Global Malaria Action Plan , 3.4 billion people (half the world’s population) live in areas at risk of malaria transmission in 106 countries and territories. In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 207 million clinical