Dr. Orbinski’s fight for access to medicine: the DNDi Initiative
By Monica Lafon
Published: March. 16, 2009 at 1:37 PM
In 1998, Dr. James Orbinski was at a Doctors Without Borders clinic in the slum settlement of Kibera outside Nairobi, Kenya. He was part of a team offering treatment for malaria and diarrhea, and was also setting up an HIV prevention program. He sat in the clinic examining a 5-year-old girl with malaria who, after three days of standard chloroquine treatment, was still vomiting and running a fever. “Her malaria was clearly resistant to the medicine. Drug resistance is a natural phenomenon, and all infectious diseases eventually develop resistance. New drugs must constantly be found,” Orbinski recounted in his book, “An Imperfect Offering.” “Every year, worldwide, almost two million people die of malaria; 90 percent of these deaths occur in Africa, and because children have more delicate immune systems, 800,000 of those who die are children,” he wrote.
When Orbinski gave a lecture at Concordia University in Canada on “Global Health and Humanitarianism” on Sept. 25, 2008, he spoke about his experiences as president of DWB in Rwanda and about his work on HIV/AIDS, encouraging the audience to take action.
After DWB was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, Orbinski dedicated the money toward the development of drugs for the “neglected” diseases. This was how the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative was born. He announced the release of two new anti-malaria drugs.
In an interview, he explained that because malaria develops drug resistance, it is not simply cured with one treatment. In 1999, a public-private partnership, the Medicines for Malaria Venture, was set up to develop new drugs for malaria, but the process could take up to 10 years. “In the short term, there is an enormous need for drugs,” he said. “500 million people can’t wait for what may come.”
In his book, he explained that the Neglected Diseases Working group thought that by combining two existing anti-malaria drugs into one tablet, they might be able to develop an effective treatment in the short term.
“The problem was real and immediate, but there seemed to be no way to get anyone to do anything about it,” he said. “With no viable alternatives on the landscape, we decided to do it ourselves.”
Read the rest of this article on Dr. Orbinski’s access to medicine fight.
