2013-05-18T06:40:47-04:00 Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=richard-chin Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Richard Chin Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.623602 2010-06-24T00:27:46-04:00 2011-05-25T16:50:20-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
Some would say yes, 50 cents is affordable.

We would say it's not, because we have to take into account the $50M. That's $50M that could have been spent on sanitation, vaccines, etc. The actual cost of each treatment is 50 cents plus $50 (plus cost of capital of course). For many of our patients, who earn 50 cents per day, $50 is not affordable. Not even close.

Now, some of my friends tell me, Richard, but that $50M would not have been spent on sanitation or vaccines. It would have gone to fighter jets or bonus for Wall St. investment bankers. I don't have a good answer to that.

But if we assume that the fund are fungible across global health, then we can't have affordable drugs without affordable drug development. If we ignore the cost of development, all we're doing is subsidizing the drug. That's not bad in and of itself - subsidies and donations go a long way, but that's not what we're here to do.

Fortunately, we believe that we can develop drugs much less expensively than big pharma. We don't have some of the constraints they do, and at iOWH, and we have had a lot of success in driving costs down.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.506689 2010-03-19T19:29:06-04:00 2011-05-25T15:55:20-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
WORLD WATER DAY, MARCH 22, 2010
Water is Life

In many parts of the world, especially here in San Francisco, people take for granted the ability to turn on a tap for safe and clean water to drink, to cook, to wash. Yet, each year more than 1 billion of our fellow human beings have little choice but to resort to using potentially harmful sources of water. The deadly impact of using unclean water is staggering.
• 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases, 90% are children under 5, mostly in developing countries.
• 88% of diarrheal diseases are attributed to unsafe water supply.
• 1.3 million people die of malaria each year, 90% are children under 5. Better management of water resources reduces transmission of malaria and other vector-borne diseases.

Monday, March 22 is World Water Day. At The Institute for OneWorld Health, a non-profit working to develop new medicines to treat diseases like diarrhea and malaria, we are marking this day by advocating for clean water and saluting those who work hard to bring safe drinking water to communities in the developing world.

The root of this underlying catastrophe lies in these plain, grim facts: 4 of every 10 people in the world do not have access to even a simple pit latrine and nearly 2 in 10 have no source of safe drinking-water.

This perpetuates a silent humanitarian crisis that kills some 3900 children every day and continues a cycle of disease and poverty.

We, at OneWorld Health, hope you will join us this World Water Day in bringing attention to the importance of fresh water and the need for safe, effective and affordable medicines to address diseases such as malaria and diarrhea. Water is life.

Richard Chin, M.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Institute for OneWorld Health
50 California St. Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94111

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Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
In developing countries, this simple, low-cost and effective way to prevent disease is equally critical for families, particularly children, year-round, and every year.

Cholera, rotavirus infections, and other diarrheal diseases make up the second largest killer of children worldwide. Theses diseases kill more young lives than AIDS, malaria and measles combined! And yet, many of these deaths can be prevented by access to clean water and the simple act of handwashing. Indeed, poor hygiene, lack of access to sanitation and unsafe drinking water together are responsible for 88 percent of diarrheal disease incidences, and contaminated hands are a common way diarrheal disease is spread.

To help spread the message about the importance of handwashing, today is Global Handwashing Day 2009 - the centerpiece of activities taking place this week to mobilize millions of people in more than 80 countries across five continents to wash their hands with soap.

OneWorld Health is proud to join a coalition of public and private organizations in support of Global Handwashing Day because the simple act of handwashing with soap and safe water can save millions of children's lives.

We also applaud the launch of a new joint report by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, DIARRHOEA: WHY CHILDREN ARE STILL DYING AND WHAT CAN BE DONE, that cites handwashing with soap as one of the most cost-efficient and effective methods for preventing diarrheal disease and saving lives

It also highlights the urgent need to focus attention on diarrheal disease, documents the neglect of the disease over the past two decades and lays out a seven-point strategy for reducing mortality with a comprehensive approach that includes proven prevention and treatment methods.

OneWorld Health has also joined more than 100 organizations worldwide in signing on to a Call to Action that encourages decision makers to commit funding and political will to defeat deaths from diarrheal disease. Now is the time to redouble our commitment to child survival and improving conditions around the world for future generations by 2015 through the Millennium Development Goals.

By continuing to raise awareness around the disease burden and the existence of proven prevention and treatment interventions - even actions as simple as handwashing - we can save lives, many lives.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.299316 2009-09-24T20:27:02-04:00 2011-05-25T14:10:19-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
Another collaborative effort to combat malaria--the Artemisinin Project--was also recently in the news in an article by The New Yorker on synthetic biology: A LIFE OF ITS OWN: Where will synthetic biology lead us?"

The Artemisinin Project is a unique, public-private-nonprofit collaboration that is based on an innovative idea: using synthetic biology to address global health challenges. Its goal is to develop a new source of artemisinin for artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) and make it available to meet global demand so we can achieve the goal of no preventable deaths from malaria by 2015.

Since late 2004, OneWorld Health, UC Berkeley and Amyris have been working together as the Artemisinin Project to develop a new, low-cost technology platform to provide non-seasonal, high-quality and affordable artemisinin - semisynthetic artemisinin - a key ingredient in first-line treatments for malaria. The Artemisinin Project is based on breakthrough technology invented by Professor Jay Keasling at the University of California, Berkeley. Sanofi-aventis joined the collaboration in 2008. OneWorld Health received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the partnership's goals and for each partner to play a unique contributing role.

Synthetic biology is a brand new area of biotechnology. The goal is to use genetic engineering technology to build brand new biological machines and processes de novo. It's an exciting area that has tremendous potential.

If technical milestones can be achieved, at commercial scale, this complementary artemisinin source would supplement the botanical supply that is currently extracted from the wormwood plant (Artemisia annua) and ensure enough artemisinin for ACTs to treat the more than 500 million estimated individuals who contract malaria each year. It would also improve the availability of high-quality artemisinin derivatives to drug manufacturers and contribute to stabilizing the price of artemisinin-containing antimalarials for the benefit of patients and payers.

Increasing the stability of the artemisinin supply is crucial to making ACTs more affordable and accessible, and reducing risks of shortages and price fluctuations. The Artemisinin Project believes this supply chain problem can be best solved by a diversified, stable supply of artemisinin from both botanical and synthetic sources that is adequate to meet worldwide demand. That means farmers and scientists working together to create enough anti-malarial medication for all who need it.

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Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
The Group of 8 countries just issued a global public health report encouraging implementation of the World Health Organization's strategy on intellectual property rights and innovations to help expedite the development of life-saving drugs for the world's poor. This follows on Glaxo Smith Kline's recent proposal to develop "patent pools" where pharmaceutical companies shared intellectual property (patents and compounds, for example) that could help advance drug development for neglected diseases.

As the first non-profit pharmaceutical company and a product development partnership (PDP), OneWorld Health welcomes these initiatives, as it will take a variety of approaches to prevent the millions of needless deaths caused by neglected diseases each year.

For the past ten years, OneWorld Health has been forging partnerships with private sector pharmaceutical companies, NGOs and government entities to advance our mission of developing safe, effective and affordable new medicines for some of the world's deadliest neglected diseases like malaria, visceral leishmaniasis and diarrheal disease.

This week, we're proud to announce our newest pharma partnership with Novartis - a collaboration that will help us discover and develop a novel therapy for secretory diarrhea, a neglected disease that kills more than 1.6 million children each year. By leveraging Novartis' expertise 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 accelerate the drug development process for life-threatening childhood diarrhea.

We believe in strong intellectual property rights and, at the same time, we are encouraged by any and all new initiatives to leverage intellectual property to address global public health challenges. We are hopeful that the WHO and Glaxo Smith Kline efforts will help speed the development of life-saving drugs for neglected diseases, and we encourage others in the
private, public and NGO sectors to further advocate for and experiment with expanding the scientific resource pool so greatly needed to combat neglected diseases.

Just as there is no single treatment to combat malaria -- a combination of medicine, bed nets and better water irrigation all play a vital role -- there must also be multiple approaches to leveraging intellectual property to advance the development of life-saving drugs to combat neglected diseases.

This week's news developments -- the WHO and the Group of Eight calling for open access to intellectual property, a for-profit pharmaceutical company proposing a patent pool to share intellectual property and two pharmaceutical giants working with a non-profit pharmaceutical company to create a development pipeline for diarrheal disease -- would have been
unheard of ten years ago.

While we still have a long way to go, the global health community is making progress on shifting from aspiration to action.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.231472 2009-07-14T11:39:39-04:00 2011-05-25T13:35:19-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/ President Barack Obama's speech Saturday in Accra, Ghana, as provided by the White House.
 


While memories of President Obama speech in Ghana promising a "comprehensive, global health strategy" are fresh, we hope he, Ghanian President John Atta-Mills and other world leaders do not miss an opportunity to address the neglected disease that's one of the world's most pervasive killers of children worldwide -- childhood diarrheal disease. 
 


In Ghana, diarrhea accounts for 25 percent of all deaths in children under five and is among the top three reported causes of morbidity. Children under five typically have three to five episodes of diarrhea and a similar number of respiratory infections a year. 
 


Every day, approximately 4,500 poor children under the age of five in developing countries die from this wholly preventable and treatable disease that's been neglected not only by world leaders, but by the media and public as well. 
 


At OneWorld Health, we are working to discover and develop novel treatments for diarrheal disease that are safe, effective and affordable to even the poorest of the poor. We're making headway on this expensive, complex and time-intensive process by collaborating with our private sector, NGO and government partners. 
 


Now, our latest collaboration with our newest pharma partner, Novartis, is helping 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 aim is to greatly accelerate the drug development process.
 


We encourage anyone who's concerned about the senseless number of childhood deaths caused by diarrheal diseases to support advocacy efforts to ensure that it's no longer a neglected disease and the development of affordable and accessible treatments for all.
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Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
That has me wondering, though, why an equally (if not more) devastating illness continues to receive comparatively little attention: diarrheal diseases, which kill approximately 2 million children under the age of five in developing countries each and every year.

What if we responded with the same urgency?

Diarrheal diseases -- cholera, rotavirus, shigellosis, and others -- are the second leading killer of children under the age of five in the developing world (pneumonia is #1). Diarrhea actually kills more young children around the world than malaria, AIDS and TB combined.

Worse yet, this is the case even though we have many solutions that are easy and affordable, and that could be deployed today to save millions of infants and children.

At OneWorld Health, we are working on developing unique new treatments to complement traditional approaches for fighting diarrhea. Collaborations like the one we have with Roche, granting us free access to their pharmaceutical compound library, will allow us to assemble a portfolio of product candidates to address various aspects of diarrheal diseases, with a special focus on treatments for infants and young children.

These partnerships are extremely valuable and crucial if we are to make the goal of reducing child mortality a reality.

Awareness and advocacy are equally critical. Not long ago, many of us in the US weren't paying much attention to malaria. Now, thanks to the malaria community's relentless advocacy, we are engaged in a myriad of campaigns and efforts to eradicate this scourge.

We can all learn from the success of efforts to eradicate malaria, and we must do the same for diarrheal diseases to prevent millions of needless deaths each year.

That's why OneWorld Health is proud to join our colleagues from PATH, WaterAid America and other groups across the health and development communities in a Call to Action -- imploring the international community to take actions necessary to stop the wholly preventable deaths caused by diarrheal diseases.

Diarrheal diseases don't have to be a top killer of children in low income countries. We already hold in our hands cost-effective and proven solutions for preventing and treating diarrhea.

With more resources and effective implementation of available health, water and sanitation solutions, we can save millions of children right now. That diarrhea remains a leading cause of death among children around the world exemplifies the urgency of reinvigorating efforts to improve child health and human development.

Please join this effort and help OneWorld Health prevent and treat a senseless killer.

We have the ability to stop diarrheal diseases. What we need is the public and political will to do it.
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Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/ post:

You've raised some excellent points about how we view people in need. As our virtual connections increase and we become a more global society, individual groups can no longer afford to isolate themselves from other countries or cultures simply because they have what they need to take care of their own. In addition, the gap between the poor and rich countries (which is a relatively new phenomenon that has emerged only over the last couple of centuries) continues to grow larger and larger.

But increased travel and the exchange of ideas and goods have made us interdependent and more aware of each other. Fortunately, this idea of "other" is slowly disappearing as we learn more about each other, what we have in common as well as what makes us different. With this knowledge is the realization that a child with a debilitating illness in a developing country is suffering just as much as a child with the illness in our country would be. That child's parents have the same fear, love and responsibility that we do.

Knowing that we can help those in need, the question really becomes: how do we put our resources to the best use? One area, as you mention, is corporate social responsibility (CSR). Large organizations are certainly coming to see how CSR can be a win-win scenario for all partners. But we need not rely on business alone to solve complex global problems. Another truth about raising awareness, and funds, for critical social causes is that many organizations thrive because of small gifts (or "sharing" as you call it) of time and money given by a multitude of donors. Think of the enormous success of President Obama's grassroots mobilization. The other is sustainability. As a social enterprise, we are working hard to make our organization and others that follow us in the future sustainable, and to leverage the resources we have and obtain from our stakeholders and sponsors.

I serve as CEO of The Institute for OneWorld Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company that develops safe, effective, and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world. We have embarked on a number of different partnerships to raise awareness about neglected diseases in the developing world, develop drugs to treat these diseases, and engage the global community to work together and combine our resources.

Large gifts from a few individuals is not the only way to make a real difference--getting everyone engaged in making the world a healthier place, having more people "share" will get us there faster with benefits to all.

Richard Chin, M.D.
CEO, The Institute for OneWorld Health]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.194961 2009-05-01T20:07:19-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
Many families in the U.S. will be celebrating much like us. The statistics bear this out - an estimated 85 million roses will be delivered on Mother's Day. 151 million Mother's Day cards will be sent.

Unfortunately, in impoverished communities around the world, millions of mothers won't enjoy a Mother's Day like ours. They aren't showered with affection on a special day in their honor; they're neglected year-round. The statistics bear this out - hundreds of thousands of mothers die needlessly from preventable diseases each year. And 25,000 of their children (most under the age of five) die every single day from wholly preventable causes.

According to the Associated Press, even Slumdog Millionaire's child stars are still living in impoverished surroundings, surrounded by neglected families.

Fortunately, we can all help to change those statistics, prevent these needless deaths and give mothers around the world an equal chance to live healthy lives. As we celebrate Mother's Day this year, OneWorld Health is encouraging those who can to help mothers and children in developing countries who need essential medicines the most but can least afford them.

Over 1 billion people a year suffer from neglected diseases each year, and Mother's Day is an opportune time to remember not only our own mothers, but those around the world who struggle every day just to survive.

We're proud to be working with our partners on initiatives to raise awareness of neglected diseases affecting the world's poor and develop affordable, life-saving medicines so that all mothers, everywhere, won't be neglected on Mother's Day or any day.

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Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/ $225 million initiative aimed at bringing effective anti-malarial drugs to all who need them.

"The age when the world had effective drugs against infectious diseases but let millions die each year because they couldn't afford them is over," he declared. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will manage the new initiative.

Malaria is not a new disease; throughout history it has claimed the lives of millions of people, including some of the most famous figures in history -- Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan are both thought to have died from the disease. Yet for all our attempts to eradicate malaria, thousands of years later, we are still at its mercy.

Today, malaria still claims over one million lives a year, with roughly half of the world's population at risk to the disease. The malaria parasite is a particularly wily foe and has overcome our attempts to defeat it on numerous occasions in the past. But the Roll Back Malaria Partnership has created a roadmap to eliminate malaria regionally and then eventually eradicate it altogether. Although the disease is widely considered to be beatable, a large effort from global stakeholders is required in order to develop the wide portfolio of treatments, preventions and research necessary to ensure that the disease is brought under control and eventually eradicated.

Even though global funding has increased over the years, the UN Millennium Development Goal of halting and reversing the spread of malaria by 2015 seems a hard-to-reach target. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership estimates that some 8.9 billion dollars will be needed to be spent on research in the next 10 years to progress towards control, regional elimination and, eventually, eradication. This is no doubt a tremendous investment, but it's one that must be made, and one that will eventually pay dividends.

Vaccines are the ultimate goal in prophylactic therapy and Artemisin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs) are the current WHO-recommended treatment for malaria. In total, 228 million doses of ACTs are required per year, along with 730 million nets and 1.5 billion diagnosis tests. Further, additional dollars must be committed to help these resources actually reach their intended recipients.

There has been hesitation to invest in ACTs due to the unstable and unpredictable market for artemisinin - the raw material for ACTs that comes from the plant artemisia annua. Novartis, the primary producer of ACTs, estimates that it has had to absorb losses of 100 million dollars in producing the drug due to the volatility of the artemisinin price. Making this market more stable is crucial to the success of ACTs and will require a range of interventions from the market to the lab.

To ultimately bring more certainty to this market, three scientific projects under the umbrella of the Artemisinin Enterprise, and backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are using the latest technology to address the problem of undulating Artemisinin prices.

The Centre for Novel Agricultural Products in York is using plant science to produce a plant with a higher yield of artemisinin; the Institute for OneWorld Health is looking into ways of developing semi-synthetic artemisinin through fermentation; and Medicines for Malaria Venture is working on developing a more stable, rapid acting, fully synthetic artemisinin-like molecule.

Although each of these projects sounds complicated, they all go to the root of the problem and will contribute to a more stable, affordable and better quality supply of ACTs. A course of ACTs can be around 30 to 60 times the price of ineffective non-artemisinin therapies. Progress in the derivatization process could markedly reduce the money spent on extracting artemisinin and enable it to be spent in other areas of the fight against malaria.

The magnitude of eradicating malaria can seem daunting, but there are important short-term and long-term efforts that anyone can support on World Malaria Day and every day. On the short-term front, buy a life-saving malaria net from Nothing But Nets. On the longer-term front, learn more about supporting malaria drug development efforts from the Artemisinin Enterprise and advocate government efforts to provide essential funding to combat malaria worldwide.

Only aggressive short-term and long-term action will save millions of lives and eventually make malaria history.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.174732 2009-03-13T13:22:35-04:00 2011-05-25T13:10:22-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/ OneWorld Health Malaria Project partner and U.C. Berkeley professor Jay Keasling on The Colbert Report.

While responding to Stephen's jokes, and deflecting his accusations of being a "mad scientist," Dr. Keasling discussed efforts to engineer bacteria that can be used to produce low-cost anti-malarial drugs. This technology is the basis for OneWorld Health's malaria project - our private/public/nonprofit sector collaboration with U.C. Berkeley, Amyris Biotechnologies and sanofi-aventis. Our goal is to create an affordable source of artemisinin, so that even the poorest patients can have access to malaria medicines. Our project also contributes to important goals articulated by the Roll Back Malaria's Global Malaria Action Plan - no preventable deaths from malaria by 2015 and universal access to anti-malarials.

All of us at OneWorld Health are proud of Jay for holding his own with Stephen and we are proud of our work with him to develop safe, effective and affordable anti-malarial drugs for the world's poor who so desperately need it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.172646 2009-03-06T17:07:22-05:00 2011-05-25T13:05:20-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/ UK Times piece, Alice Miles calls Slumdog Millionaire "Poverty Porn" and yesterday guests on NPR's Talk of the Nation discussed whether these types of films exploit, distort or glorify the poorest people on the planet.

Apparently, tours of Mumbai slums are experiencing a boon since Slumdog Millionaire won eight Academy Awards -- more evidence that this film created an emotional connection between Western audiences and the characters it depicts.

Whether the film is exploitative or educational, what really matters is that this film has focused attention on the poverty that's so prevalent in this part of the world. This creates a unique opportunity to leverage the extraordinary success of this Best Picture winner into action -- to help improve the living conditions of the world's urban poor.

Can this feel-good movie of the year also end up doing good? Popular culture has proved an awesome agent of change throughout history -- from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and labor reform to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and global warming, media can shock, educate and, yes, even entertain people into taking action for a compelling cause.

OneWorld Health launched a campaign the day after the Academy Awards, with the goal of challenging Americans to channel their enthusiasm and energy for Slumdog Millionaire into supporting nonprofit organizations like ours that help the millions who die from curable diseases.

"Poverty Porn" is catchy, and if that's the way some want to frame continued Western interest in Slumdog Millionaire, let's have that conversation ... as long as it ends with a call for meaningful action and involves writing checks to help improve living conditions for the world's poor.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.169864 2009-02-25T12:28:15-05:00 2011-05-25T13:05:20-04:00

Richard Chin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-chin/
As it makes its victory rounds, the real test of Slumdog Millionaire is whether this year's undisputed feel-good movie is able to move hearts and minds to improve conditions for the poorest among us.

OneWorld Health, the country's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company which develops lifesaving medicines for the world's poor, launched a campaign today that channels the energy and enthusiasm behind Slumdog Millionaire to raise awareness for neglected diseases and the need to provide poor families in developing countries with essential medicines.

We kicked off efforts with a full page ad in Monday's New York Times -- viewable online at: oneworldhealth.org -- and will soon unveil online advertising, social media initiatives and visibility activities in partnership with other global health leaders.

Over one billion people a year suffer from neglected diseases and it is poor children like the film's characters who are most likely to die from preventable and treatable diseases.

Let's be honest: for a feel-good movie, watching Slumdog Millionaire doesn't feel very good until the end of the film. Watching the characters trying to survive lives of abject poverty in India's slums is painful, but everyone who was captivated and moved by the film can take responsibility for helping to change the lives of those portrayed in it.

OneWorld Health is encouraging Slumdog fans to visit www.oneworldhealth.org, learn how we are developing lifesaving drugs for the world's poor, and make a contribution -- however small -- to help save even more lives.

These days, nobody feels rich. But even a small contribution to OneWorld Health, or another organization serving neglected populations, can make everyday Americans feel like millionaires.

How the Western world channels its enthusiasm for Slumdog Millionaire into meaningful action will be the test of whether this feel-good movie can do good, too.


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