He is dedicated to medicine for the poorest.
I have lived in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia. From an office in Europe you cannot understand how diseases affect a corner of Africa. Any solution you want to develop starts with the real patient.
explain to me
I'm going to tell you something that happened two weeks ago in Latin America: the patients did not take the pills, they wanted injections. They had the perception that the injections were stronger and would cure them sooner.
Do things like this happen often?
Yes, the majority of patients in Africa consider that white pills are for white people and that they have to take black pills, which are for black people.
And what do you do about that?
If you want them to take medication you have to talk to the patients, their families, the doctors and nursing staff who work with them. You have to have contact with the population you intend to help and if you have to paint the pills black you do it.
Many of these neglected diseases are scary.
Imagine sleeping sickness, a parasite transmitted by the tsetse fly, which enters your skin, reaches the blood, goes up to the brain, you fall into a coma and die if not treated.
And is it treated without problems?
Yes, like Chagas disease, which transmits another parasite that enters the body and causes your heart to grow until it bursts.
One in five people in the world suffers from neglected diseases.
1.6 billion people are affected each year by these diseases that are not at all rare.
But they kill.
Yes, others do not kill but cause social stigma, such as cutaneous leishmaniasis, which creates indelible wounds, especially on the face. Those who suffer from it suffer at school, it is difficult for them to find work and a partner.
What impacts you?
The joy I experience with patients; a child in Congo condemned to die from sleeping sickness and who, thanks to the treatment we developed, was cured.
You see many sick people, do you remember them all?
Clear. Another case that marked me a lot is that of a baby with AIDS. He had to take a remedy twice a day for life, which until now was very bitter. The poor mother suffered from seeing her son cry every day.
What have they done for him and her?
Turn the medicine into a sweet syrup. It changed that mother's life. That impact on the daily lives of people that sometimes one does not value is one of the things that make me happiest.
What else have you discovered in 30 years of career?
When the objective is clear and for the common good, it is incredible what people and different organizations and laboratories are capable of doing together for the collective good.
Is ingenuity and humanity sometimes worth more than money?
Without ingenuity and humanity, money is useless. You have to be ingenious with science and also in how to bring the treatment to patients. Let's go back to sleeping sickness.
OK.
With the existing treatment based on injectable arsenic, one person in twenty died. The logistics of getting the shots to remote towns are enormous. We developed a heat-resistant pill, a simple way to identify the disease and an explanatory leaflet for all languages and dialects. I am very proud.
There are cultures that have their own medicine, like China or India.
Yes, and we must respect it, it is super important. Science is an international language and you have to discuss it with your doctors. In Niger, where they have the highest birth rate in the world, eight children per woman on average, he helped the Ministry of Health expand AIDS treatment.
And how did he do it?
All pregnant women had to be treated so that they did not transmit it to their children. We prepared all the hospitals, but the women did not return for their monthly treatment.
Because?
They saved their son, we couldn't explain it. We consulted with anthropologists and understood that the stigma that being infected by AIDS represents for them is terrible. We looked for a one-shot treatment and commissioned the midwives to give it to them.
Bravo.
Treatment is not enough, you have to respect their culture and adapt to it.
