Developing new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for Malaria, Cholera and Tuberculosis
Residents of developing countries face serious medical issues on a near daily basis, and to worsen matters it is quite often impossible to find adequate medical attention. Diseases like malaria, cholera, and tuberculosis rarely appear within American borders, but wreak havoc on populations in developing world countries like South America, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
To help solve the global health crisis, biopharmaceutical innovation is needed. Every year, infectious diseases like Malaria and Tuberculosis kill millions of people in poor countries because the medicines to treat those diseases are inaccessible, outdated, unsafe, ineffective, or simply have not yet been created.
Malaria is a year round threat for equatorial populations. A parasite, Malaria spreads via mosquito bite and can be prevented with relatively cheap means such as mosquito nets wrapped around beds, insect repellents, and insecticides. Treatment for the parasite is much more expensive than prevention- the cost going so high as to prohibit many victims from obtaining the necessary antimalarial medications. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Malaria kills one million people per year- making it a global killer and a cause for global concern.
Tuberculosis, another global killer, affects nearly one third of the world’s population. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tuberculosis killed nearly two million people in 2008- most of them in Africa and Southeast Asia. TB afflicts only 4 people per 100,000 in the United States- one of the lowest rates in the world, whereas Africa faces a rate of 350 per 100,000 infected with the disease.
Creating and implementing the right tools to fight these diseases is a complex puzzle. No one sector alone has the resources to solve the great unmet medical needs of our times– it will take the public and private sectors working together to meet the global health need to save the lives of patients in poor countries.
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To help solve the global health crisis
, biopharmaceutical innovation
is needed. BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) works to engage companies to drive partnerships and invest in global health initiatives that result in the new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics that will save lives in poor countries.