Bayer donates drugs to treat sleeping sickness
Bayer will provide two pharmaceutical products Germanin (suramin) and Lampit (nifurtimox) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) free of charge for an initial five-year period. The WHO envisages to coordinate the treatment of African sleeping sickness with both pharmaceutical products.
"Our aim is to support the activities of WHO in the fight against sleeping sickness, a disease that threatens almost sixty million people in Africa", said Dr. David R. Ebsworth, President of Bayer's Pharmaceutical Business Group, following discussions between representatives of the WHO and Bayer.
Bayer is in favour of supporting a broad-based "Integrated Sleeping Sickness Initiative" covering all aspects of the disease from infection, diagnosis and therapy to prevention. Dr. Ebsworth stated: "Affected patients should receive appropriate aid from public and private sources for medical, ethical and social reasons."
African sleeping sickness is caused by a parasite transmitted by the tsetse fly. It is a fatal condition if left untreated. The disease was brought under control in the 1960s, but since then prevention and therapy have been neglected, leading to a resurgence of sleeping sickness. In Congo this infection now kills as many people as AIDS.
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