Health Partnerships Review

Abstract

"The poor die young. Data from every part of the world show that, whether comparing richer and poorer populations within or between countries, those that are least well off have shorter life expectancies and heavier burdens of disease than those that are relatively wealthy. While the highest attainable standard of health has been declared a human right, this health inequity reflects a collective neglect at national and global levels – neglect of diseases, of health systems and ultimately of people. Three areas of failure can be highlighted that represent different dimensions of the problem – failures of science (where basic knowledge or tools are lacking), failures of the market (where economic incentives for the production of needed medicines are lacking), and public health failures (where systems and programmes to implement available interventions are lacking). Collaborative mechanisms to address these failures and to reverse the neglect have emerged in the last few years. The establishment in the 1970s of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) as a joint programme sponsored by a group of intergovernmental agencies (current sponsors are UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO)) was the first collective effort on a global scale to close the gap in one crucial area – the dearth of effective, affordable drugs for a range of tropical parasitic diseases affecting millions of people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Merck Mectizan Donation Programme initiated in the late 1980s, providing free ivermectin to WHO for the treatment of river blindness, created an innovative partnership between the private and public sectors. It underscored the need for attention to delivery if effective and affordable drugs for diseases of the poor are to be accessible to those in need of them."(pg 5)