DNDi viewpoint

Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director, DNDi
Connect to Fight Neglect
A Decade of Medical Innovations for Neglected Patients
[May 2013]
A decade ago, research and development (R&D) for neglected diseases was at a standstill. At the time, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was experiencing firsthand in the field what it meant to be unable to treat patients with neglected diseases, because treatments did not exist or were inadequate. So MSF decided to commit its 1999 Nobel Peace Prize money to R&D for neglected diseases and, with six key public health partners worldwide – MSF, the Indian Council of Medical Research, Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, Institut Pasteur in France, and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR) – DNDi was launched in 2003.

Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director, DNDi
Now is not the time to retreat from the fight against NTDs
[March 2013]
Last year saw an important cornerstone laid in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and one that highlighted the need to keep NTD research and development (R&D) on the global public health agenda. In January 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its NTD strategy, ‘Accelerating Work to Overcome the Global Impact of Neglected Tropical Diseases: A Roadmap for Implementation’, which set forth specific, time-bound targets for the prevention, control, elimination, or eradication of the 17 WHO-defined NTDs by 2020. The goals were set high, and key actors came together to commit to these goals at the ‘Uniting to Combat NTDs’ meeting in London in January 2012. At this meeting, major private, public, international, and non-governmental partners, including DNDi, aligned their efforts to support the WHO roadmap and accelerate progress toward eliminating or controlling 10 of the 17 NTDs by 2020 as put forth in the resulting ‘London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases’.

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Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft, Medical Director, DNDi
Regulatory Harmonization in Developing Countries Needed to Speed up Neglected Patients' Access to New Drugs
[October 2012]
The need for regulatory harmonization (i.e. either allowing for centralized drug registration in multiple countries as one single approval, or mutual recognition which entails expediting registration in additional countries once a drug has been registered in a primary country with sufficient regulatory capacities) in order to reduce the duplication of research efforts, use resources more efficiently, and especially to speed up the process to reach patients, was identified decades ago in Europe.

Dr Florent Mbo Kuikumbi, provincial coordinating physician of North Bandundu for the National Human African Trypanosomiasis Control Programme (DRC)
Advocacy for sustainable elimination strategy for sleeping sickness
(December 2012)

Sleeping sickness has several facets. We have to cover all of the endemic areas with surveillance efforts, otherwise there will always be pockets than can later lead to epidemics. Today, for example, in Bandundu Province in the DRC, we can only say we are controlling the disease, not eliminating it. We have to be able to cover all of the disease pockets and follow them for some time.

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