Tropical diseases plague poor cheap but treatment: WHO

Tropical diseases plague poor cheap but treatment: WHO


The Director General of WHO Margaret Chan speaks at the United Nations offices in Geneva on May 17, 2010 in a file photo. "The neglected tropical diseases blight the lives of millions of people around the world and threaten the health of millions more, " Chan said in the report, "Working to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases. "

Tropical diseases that affect people, mostly poor cost billions of dollars in lost productivity a year and companies should be encouraged to take drugs to treat them, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The United Nations agency, in its first report on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), urged governments and donors to invest more in the fight against 17 infections often rejected by various researchers, which can cause blindness, damage the heart and death.

He said the diseases that often costs just pennies to treat. They are Chagas disease, which affects about 10 million people in Latin America and dengue, another mosquito-borne virus infected, the WHO said that it was spreading rapidly around the world and now poses a risk for developed countries.

"The neglected tropical diseases blight the lives of millions of people around the world and threaten the health of millions more," the WHO director general Margaret Chan said in the report, "Working to overcome the global impact of disease NTDs. "

"The production of medicines used to treat neural tube defects should be more attractive to companies that manufacture generic drugs," he added.

Major drug manufacturers have already provided high-quality drugs free of charge to hundreds of millions of poor people who suffer from these diseases, especially in remote areas of Latin America, Asia and Africa, according to WHO.

Earlier Thursday, GlaxoSmithKline announced it will donate up to an extra 400 million doses of antiparasitic drug albendazole at a cost of about 12 million pounds (19 million) a year, WHO to treat children in Africa are the risk of intestinal worms.

The WHO said in a statement that the pharmaceutical company officials were due to announce new commitments in a one-day meeting held at WHO headquarters.

The cost of treating a patient with lymphatic filariasis with ivermectin and albendazole, donated by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively, ranging from five to 10 U.S. cents, according to the report.

The mosquito-borne disease causes intestinal worms and disfigured limbs and genitals, with an estimated cost of $ 1.3 billion annually in lost productivity in Africa and Southeast Asia, he said.

The so-called "preventive chemotherapy, often in the form of tablets taken once or twice a year, is the best public health strategy, WHO said. The excellent safety record of these drugs means that the diagnosis of individual patients is not necessary in areas where diseases are endemic.

Pesticides should be used judiciously to control vector-borne tropical diseases, he said.

Southern Sudan has reported repeated outbreaks of visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease also known as kala-azar, with some 6,363 cases and 303 deaths reported last year, WHO said last week.

That was more than six times the number of cases in recent years in the oil producing region, insecure and weak health services due to vote on January 9 on whether to secede.

WHO requested $ 700,000 to contain outbreaks not for health staff training and enhancing the detection of symptoms.

"Before the situation becomes uncontrollable, we must do something about it," said Aden Abdi, head of the WHO office for southern Sudan, noting that the disease has a 95 percent rate of mortality if treated early.