Could you speak to the process of getting the two pharmaceutical companies to contribute pharmaceuticals against filariasis?
One of the first things Dr. Brundtland did when she started was to call the CEOs of the major pharmaceutical companies to a round table at WHO. They began a series of discussions, which we continue now at a lower level, on how to make drugs and vaccines accessible in developing countries and how we can have governments working with industry. A result of these discussions, and this is only a short-term solution, has been drug donations from drug companies. The long-term solution is an attractive, high-volume, low-profit market so that industry can do the job. In the meantime, industry has been very willing to work with us on giving donations. The precedent was set in the 1980s when Merck and Company gave ivermectin for the Onchocerciasis Control Program in Africa. Merck and Company gave ivermectin in perpetuity, and it is still giving ivermectin for that project, which has eliminated blindness where onchocerciasis had been endemic. People have been able to move back to villages thanks t
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