doctorswithoutborders:

DNDi and New Drugs for Neglected Diseases

Founded in 2003, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) brings together the academic, medical, public health, and pharmaceutical worlds to create effective drugs to treat neglected diseases like Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, and visceral leishmaniasis. DNDi has developed an innovative not-for-profit model for drug research and development that is patient-centered and based on needs rather than profits.

in 2003 MSF brought together five prominent public sector research institutes—Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, and France’s Pasteur Institute—and the UNDP/World Bank/World Health Organization’s Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases to create DNDi.

In just seven years, under the leadership of former General Director of MSF in France, Dr. Bernard Pecoul, DNDi has introduced four new treatments: two treatments for drug-resistant malaria that have already reached 80 million people; the first new treatment in 25 years for the advanced stage of sleeping sickness; and a new combination therapy for treatment of visceral leishmaniasis in Africa.

Photo: Screening for Chagas in Colombia.
Colombia 2010 © Mads Nissen