"The study offers a variety of 'lessons learned' that can help other countries build a local biotech sector that brings local health benefits. They may also be of relevance to industrially advanced nations," says Dr. Singer.
Development of biotech industries in developing countries is essential, he added. Because markets for drugs in industrialized countries are much more lucrative, the creation of health products for people in the poorer parts of the world has lagged badly behind. Of 1,393 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1999, only 16 were for tropical and other diseases predominantly affecting developing countries -- and three of the 16, were for tuberculosis, which affects countries worldwide. More than 175 new drugs were developed for cardiovascular disease in the same period.
Necessity becomes opportunity in Cuba
Not only did Cuba represent a small market, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. trade embargo forced it to develop its home-grown solutions to local health problems. After Cuban scientists trained in labs around the world in the early 1980s, Cuban research and development programs led to the first and only vaccine for a strain of meningitis and stemmed a local outbreak in the mid 1980s.
More recently, Cuba produced the world's first human vaccine with a synthetic antigen that protects against Haemophilus influenzae type b infection, which often leads to pneumonia and meningitis in children under the age of five.
Despite being relatively poor, Cuba's biotech sector is among the most successful in the developing world today. Cuba exports biotechnology products to more than 50 countri
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Contact: Juliet Heller
juliet@julietheller.co.uk
44-1-621-868-083
University of Toronto Joint Center for Bioethics
6-Dec-2004