Tackling Infectious Diseases

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to reply to this debate on behalf of the Opposition. The debate was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). I congratulate him and the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on their excellent work in this area. I declare an interest: my partner works in the NHS and higher education sector in research and diagnosis of neglected tropical diseases.

I will begin by addressing the Department for International Development’s capacity for research and development to tackle infectious diseases, before turning to some of the international opportunities that lie ahead. The Labour party has a proud history of supporting international development. It created DFID and worked to bring development issues up the political agenda. We supported the Bill that enshrined our commitment to spending 0.7% of our gross national income on official development assistance, and I am pleased that, to date, the Government have adhered to that.

Earlier this month, Government figures projected that health would be the biggest spend of ODA over 2017 and 2018. That is the correct thing to do, as health is a public good and a building block of sustainable democracies and strong economies that work for all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall, said, infectious diseases such as HIV, TB, malaria and neglected tropical diseases are all related to poverty and are often associated with stigma. Tackling them should be at the heart of our investment in global health. After all, the primary aim of ODA is poverty reduction.

Infectious diseases do not respect borders. In our increasingly globalised world, we must take steps, domestically and internationally, to address epidemics of infectious disease. That makes sense in the interests of global health security, too. Within the commitment to spend 0.7%, the Government have pledged to spend around 3% of the total on research and development. In last October’s DFID research review, it was stated that this commitment, together with cross-Government investment in the Ross fund, would equate to £390 million over four years.

The Secretary of State has identified tackling infectious disease as one of the global challenges that her Department aims to address, but this challenge requires not only revenue investments in healthcare programmes, but sustained investment in research and development to ensure that we have the right tools to take on the fight.

We have heard today about the inadequacy of current treatments, diagnostics and prevention strategies, and we are certainly not on course to meet the third global goal for sustainable development—to end epidemics of the major global infectious diseases by 2030. It specifically highlights the threat of HIV, TB, malaria and the neglected tropical diseases.

I have four questions for the Minister. First, will the Minister provide the House with a breakdown of resources allocated to infectious disease research and development? I hope that he will give us some figures today. The Ross fund, which is the £1 billion portfolio of investments mentioned in today’s debate and announced in 2016, is jointly administered by DFID and the Department of Health. The fund was established to invest in research and development

“for drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to combat the most serious infectious diseases in developing countries”.

That Government commitment is correct, but there has been a lack of transparency on how exactly the fund is to be allocated, and as of last night, the website portal was still not live, and we are well into 2017.

Secondly, will the Minister provide the House with details of how the fund will be used to achieve its aim of combating the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, namely HIV, TB and malaria? We want the details.

Members have mentioned product development partnerships, of which DFID has been a long-standing supporter under Governments of different political persuasions. These not-for-profit partnerships have proved to be a useful vehicle for bolstering DFID’s research capacity; for gaining an understanding of the epidemics in communities most at risk; and for building research capacity in developing countries. With that in mind, may I pose my third question to the Minister? Can he reassure the House that DFID will continue to support product development partnerships and show the international leadership required to bring other donors back to the table and ensure that our investments to date are not lost? If my research is correct, we have lost some other donors to the programme. The question from the Labour Benches is: what are the Government doing to regain the leadership on that crucial question?

A vaccine for malaria has completed clinical trials and is due to be piloted in sub-Saharan Africa soon, but HIV is as yet without a vaccine, and although we might think that we are adequately protected from tuberculosis by our BCG—bacillus Calmette-Guérin—that vaccine actually dates back to the 1920s and is only moderately effective in preventing TB in young children, and it does not adequately protect adolescents and adults. We know that many people who begin courses of TB treatment in third-world countries do not complete them because of the cost. My fourth and final question is therefore this: will the Minister confirm that DFID will continue to support vaccine development in particular?

Let me turn to opportunities for international collaboration. Members have mentioned access to medicines. The recent report by the UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel called for the cost of research and development to be delinked from the price charged for medicines, and for pharmaceutical companies to reveal the details of their spending on research and development, marketing and drug promotion. That added layer of transparency would help to ensure fairness in drug pricing and assist international agencies more effectively to support drug and vaccine deployment in countries where they are needed.

The final, and perhaps most pertinent, issue that I wish to raise is drug resistance. We have talked at length about antimicrobial resistance, so I will not repeat what other Members have said. I hope that the Minister will speak about Lord O’Neill’s report and his response to it.

In conclusion, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall began today’s excellent debate by talking about the failure to address a number of these issues—not just antimicrobial resistance but TB, malaria and other tropical diseases. We have heard about the excellent work done by our all-party parliamentary groups. We have heard the commitment, at least across the Back Benches, to the 0.7% commitment on overseas development aid. I can certainly give an assurance on behalf of the Labour party on that front. I look forward to hearing the Minister respond to my four questions and share his knowledge—if he has any yet—of the manifesto commitment that his party will be putting forward in a few short weeks.