Focus on 'neglected disease'

2006-05-22 13:12

Nairobi - The sickness starts with the bite of a tiny sand fly and mutates quickly from there - chills, later fever, then an onslaught of black lesions that will most likely prove fatal within six months without treatment.

Known as kala azar - a Hindi word meaning Black Death - the disease had killed more people than the 21-year civil war in Sudan, many of them extremely poor children.

Dr Willy Tonui of Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) said: "The people who are affected by the problem are poor. That's why we call it a neglected problem.

"Since you're dealing with a poor population, they won't be able to purchase the drug."

Drug research priorities

With the United Nations' 192-member World Health Assembly meeting starting on Monday in Geneva, the governments of Kenya and Brazil had sent a resolution asking the panel to urge governments to set drug research priorities based on disease burden.

According to the UN, less than 10% of investment in health research went to diseases that affected 90% of the world.

Dr Davy Koech, KEMRI's CEO, said: "Developing countries have the capacity to provide new solutions for old diseases, but every day we see how difficult it is to get support for research and development into diseases that affect the poor and for which there is no profitable market."

Also called visceral leishmaniasis, the disease caused high fever, swelling of the spleen and massive weight loss.

Most cases 'took place in Sudan'

According to World Health Organisation, about 500 000 new cases appeared every year in the world, with a sharp increase in the last decade. Most cases took place in Sudan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Brazil.

But, unlike treatments for scourges such as Aids and heart disease, there had been precious few advances in kala azar drugs in nearly two decades.

Critics said that the problem was that there was little financial incentive to develop drugs for people who would never be able to pay for them.

Medicins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said the disease killed a third of the population in Sudan's Western Upper Nile region between 1990 and 1994 100 000 of 300 000 people.

Kala azar 'life-threatening'

The organisation said that it was a tragedy comparable to the bubonic plague of medieval times. Treatment involved a 30-day course of injections.

Dr Monique Wassuna, director of Kenya's Clinical Research Centre, said: "For the last 60 or 70 years, it's the same old medicine being used to treat these people."

She said diagnosing kala azar could be life-threatening because it involved a "splenic aspirate."

Another option was a painful bone marrow sample. She said: "This is how it has always been diagnosed."

KEMRI officials pointed to a tiny kala azar research lab as evidence of low funding.

The room had dozens of plastic bins - including one bound together by masking tape - holding sand flies swarming around a few apple slices.

- AP