Partnerships a Critical Ingredient to Combating Neglected Diseases
Richard Chin, M.D. is a Board Certified internist with extensive expertise in drug development. He has overseen over 40 Investigational New Drug Applications for new molecular entities and new indications, as well as eight New Drug Applications/Biologic License Applications. As chief executive officer of OneWorld Health, Dr. Chin writes about a new partnership to fight one of the most pervasive killers of children worldwide.
While debates about the health care crisis are raging in the U.S., there’s another health care crisis raging worldwide. Every single day, some 4,500 children under the age of five in developing countries are dying from a neglected disease that’s one of the world’s most pervasive killers of children: childhood diarrheal disease. Even though it’s wholly preventable and treatable, secretory diarrhea kills more than 31,000 children in low-income countries each week – and 1.6 million each year.
No single organization can combat this disease and stem the eye-opening number of needless deaths from diarrheal disease – only a broad coalition of public, private and nonprofit partners will make it possible to save these millions of lives.
At OneWorld Health, we’re working to discover and develop novel treatments for diarrheal disease that are safe, effective and affordable to even the poorest of the poor and we’re addressing this expensive, complex and time-intensive global health challenge by collaborating with private sector, NGO and government partners. We’ve just welcomed our latest partner, Novartis, to help us discover and develop a novel therapy for secretory diarrhea. By leveraging Novartis' deep research on Cystic Fibrosis and Irritable Bowel Syndrome to discover and develop new compound series aimed at improving the treatment of diarrheal diseases, our goal is to expedite the drug development process for life-threatening childhood diarrhea.
We’re delighted to be collaborating with Novartis, Roche and other public, private and NGO sector partners to develop a novel drug treatment and promote child health initiatives, and encouraged by our progress to date. But we have a long way to go and we welcome more partners who wish to help prevent millions of needless childhood deaths to join our efforts.