A Step Forward for Treatment of Fungal Infection Worldwide

Submitted by GAtherton on 5 April 2017

This website has long campaigned for the provision of better treatments & new antifungal drugs for aspergillosis. The snag has always been that the newer antifungals come with a high price, a price that the developed world finds difficult to meet at times.

Consider now the difficulties that doctors in the emerging countries of the world have when attempting to treat aspergillosis and other fungal infections. Not only are newer antifungal drugs unaffordable for many but most of the more established drugs are also unavailable. GAFFI (Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections) was set up to address these shortcomings and to persuade government organisations that the provision of effective antifungal treatments was an important consideration for their people. To achieve those aims they have made available a lot of data on the numbers of people affected by serious fungal infections across the world and the availability of access to effective antifungal medication.

The World Health Organisation has a major role in the management of health, one part of which is the maintenance of a list of essential medicines. These are made up with those medicines deemed to be of high health relevance, clinical effectivity and have high cost effectivity. The list is widely accepted as a list of essential medicines that should be made available in every country as they usually carry the highest impact on health relative to cost.

GAFFI highlight the lack of access to effective antifungal medication in many parts of the world, affecting up to 3.3 million people with aspergillosis. 

GAFFI applied for the inclusion of itraconazole and voriconazole on the essential medicines list, enabling access to these drugs for the treatment of aspergillosis and other fungal infections. Happily they have been successful and as of today itraconazole and voriconazole will be included in the essential medicines list enabling many more cases of aspergillosis to be far more effectively treated than they have been until now.