Oviedo (EFE).- The Medicines for Neglected Diseases Initiative, a non-profit research organization that develops new treatments for patients from poor and vulnerable communities, has been awarded this Thursday with the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation.
Created in 2003, the organization (DNDi, in its acronym in English) was founded by Doctors Without Borders, the World Health Organization and five other public and private institutions, and since its inception it has managed to develop twelve affordable and easy treatments to administer for six diseases.
The pathologies on which he currently focuses his work are river blindness or filariasis, sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis, hepatitis C, malaria, cryptococcal meningitis, dengue, HIV , mycetoma and, in recent years, COVID-19.
According to data from the organization, one in five people worldwide (five hundred million of them children) suffers from at least one neglected disease, and given its low incidence compared to other types of ailments, the development of drugs or treatments for they are not profitable in economic terms.
Affordable treatment and access to medicines
DNDi’s strategy is based on addressing the problem through collaborations with actors involved in the health sector that allow the creation of treatments for these diseases and access to them in an affordable way.
Thus, with the pharmaceutical companies, it creates research projects, development and distribution of drugs; agrees on co-sponsorship projects for clinical studies and joint work with ministries of health and public institutions; and collaborates with knowledge and research centers around the world to reach affected communities and patients.
With more than two hundred partners in more than forty countries, DNDi undertakes an average of twenty clinical studies each year, has nine R&D projects in phase III and in the registration process, and has designed a Strategic Plan until 2028 with which it intends to get fifteen to eighteen treatments and eight to ten new drugs for your treatment.
Among its objectives is also to expand the catalog of diseases under study, such as dengue, snake bites and schistosomiasis.
Precisely, the ambitious plan that the DNDi has set for the development of new medicines and treatments that “will improve health and save millions of lives around the world” has been one of the points highlighted by the jury that has ruled today in Oviedo this award.
Unanimous support of the jury of the Princess of Asturias Award
The candidacy, which has received the unanimous support of the jury, had been proposed by the president of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Spain, Eduardo Díaz-Rubio García, and supported, among others, by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology , and Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders, an organization awarded the 1991 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord.
The Cooperation Award was the sixth of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards to be awarded this year, all of them endowed with a reproduction of a sculpture designed by Joan Miró, 50,000 euros in cash, a diploma and a badge, which will be delivered next month October during a ceremony at the Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo.
Last year the prize went to the former British sailor Ellen MacArthur, a promoter of the circular economy since the foundation to which she gives her name, and in previous editions they have been distinguished, among others, by the Hispanic Society of America (HSA), the Framework Convention of the United Nations on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Paris Agreement; Wikipedia and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In this edition, the Princess Foundation has already awarded the Arts Award to the American actress Meryl Streep; the one for Communication and Humanities to the Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine; that of Social Sciences to the French historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse; the one for Sports to the Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge, and the one for Literature to the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
The Scientific and Technical Research (June 7) and Concordia (June 14) awards are still pending.