G-8 Nations Shape Plan to Fight Diseases

WSJ.com - G-8 Nations Shape Plan to Fight Diseases: Goal Is Getting Drug Makers to Generate Vaccines Against Illnesses in Developing World

POWERFUL PREVENTION

The G8 nations are weighing a program that would encourage drug companies to come up with new vaccines against diseases that take a particular toll on developing nations.

Pneumococcus
Pneumococcal disease killed an estimated 1.6 million people in 2002. Of those, 716,000 were under age five.

Human Papillomavirus
Virus causes 288,000 deaths by cervical cancer yearly; nearly 80% of cervical cancer cases are in developing countries. About 440 million people world-wide carry HPV, although not all show clinical symptoms.

Rotavirus
Virus causes diarrhea that kills an average of 440,000 children under the age of five each year, 82% of them in poor nations.

Malaria
Parasite causes 300 million cases of illness and one million deaths a year, 90% of them in sub-Saharan Africa and most of those among children.

Tuberculosis
The TB bacillus infects one-third of the world's population and killed 1.75 million people in 2003.

HIV/AIDS
World-wide, 40.3 million people carry the AIDS virus, which caused three million deaths in 2005. Of them, 2.4 million were in sub-Saharan Africa.
Sources: World Health Organization; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; National Institutes of Health; UNAIDS