Essential Medicines News

Many of the world’s poor are unable to obtain either an accurate diagnosis or effective treatment for many treatable diseases due to an inadequate distribution of the necessary medical tools. To address this problem, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the RAND Corporation convened the Global Health Diagnostics Forum which considered acute lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, TB and sexually transmitted infections and their effects in developing nations.

As an example of what the greater availability of resources could mean,

A paediatric test for malaria with 95% sensitivity, 95% specificity, and minimal infrastructure requirements, could avert more than 100,000 childhood deaths and around 400 million unnecessary treatments annually. A test with no infrastructure requirements and 90% sensitivity and specificity could avert more than 300,000 childhood deaths and some 450 million unnecessary treatments annually.

The forum challenges scientists, developers, governments and international aid organizations to rise to the occasion and respond to the need of people in resource poor settings to develop a coordinated framework for addressing the problem.