Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles
Times
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March 2, 2000, Thursday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 5; National Desk
LENGTH: 579 words
HEADLINE:
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE;
HEALTH;
VACCINE GIANTS TO PLEDGE
THIRD- WORLD OFFENSIVE
BYLINE: RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR,
TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
The four biggest vaccine makers will announce
today at the White House that they are donating millions of doses of their
products and stepping up research to cure diseases that plague African countries
and other developing nations.
The announcement reflects a growing
realization by governments, public health doctors, medical researchers,
foundations and pharmaceutical company heads in industrialized countries that
the "neglected diseases" of the Third World pose a threat to continued global
economic development.
"There is a global crisis around the big, killer
diseases: pneumonia, tuberculosis, HIV and malaria," said Dr. Richard Feachem,
director of the Institute for Global Health at UC San Francisco and a
participant in the effort. "We have a major problem in that incentives are not
in place for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in finding cures."
President Clinton, in his new budget, is proposing a tax
credit to encourage drug companies to find vaccines
for these diseases. He is also proposing steep increases for federal research
through the National Institutes of Health and a $ 50-million U.S. contribution
to a global fund for distributing vaccines to poor countries. In Congress, Sen.
John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has introduced legislation calling for a broader package
of incentives to drug companies.
"We can really have a big wallop here,"
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading AIDS researcher, said of today's
White House meeting. "It's something that's actually happening, not talk. This
initiative has not only galvanized the drug companies, but foundations and other
organizations."
The donations and commitments from the drug industry
include:
* A million doses of hepatitis B vaccine, worth $ 100 million,
by Merck. The company will also commit to developing AIDS vaccines for strains
of the virus found in poor countries.
* Ten million doses of influenza
type B vaccine by American Home Products. The vaccines should provide protection
for more than 3 million children.
* Fifty million doses of polio vaccine
by Aventis Pasteur. The donation will support an effort to eradicate polio in
five African countries that have been engulfed in civil wars.
* A
commitment by SmithKline Beecham to expand its malaria vaccine program and begin
vaccine trials for children in the African nation of Gambia later this year.
Although the pharmaceutical industry is among the most consistently
profitable, the vast bulk of its research goes into finding treatments for
diseases and conditions that afflict the developed world, such as cancer or high
cholesterol. The infectious diseases that are the main killers in the Third
World get much less attention.
Indeed, less than 10% of all public and
private research funding goes to addressing the primary health problems that
affect 90% of the world's population.
Clinton's combination of
tax credits for private research and funding for international
organizations to buy and distribute vaccines is a strategy
aimed at developing both new products and a market for them.
"The tax
credit is an incentive to go in and do the research," Fauci said. "No matter how
wealthy a drug company is, this is important to them."
Under Clinton's
budget proposal, the government would match every dollar of vaccine sold by a
manufacturer to international health organizations with a dollar of tax
reduction. Vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS would be eligible.
LOAD-DATE: March 2, 2000 
