Some venom for the road
"Scabies is one of the commonest conditions" - The WHO
The WHO ranks scabies as a neglected tropical disease. To show they really mean it, they made an error in their grammar that no one past primary school would. But it’s not the WHO’s grammar on the page dedicated to scabies that’s concerning.
Cipher Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to the only existing RX Spinosad topical solution on the market about a year ago now, and they’ve done almost nothing with it in this period of time. This is on top of the development time for a topical that was already elongated. From the discovery of Spinosad it took 15 years to put onto our food, and then another 20 years after that to put into a topical solution. Spinosyns are poorly absorbed by our skin which is a good feature for this indication/medicine, as the mites are in the epidermis (it didn’t exactly take a breakthrough to develop). If you have the concentrate, you can simply mix it into a lotion, and it will work as demonstrated by
.It doesn’t take the establishment of licensing arrangements to accomplish delivery of Spinosad into markets of interest. Any one of a number of organizations which help organize mass drug administration programs for neglected tropical diseases would gladly assist with its distribution. Like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or the WHO, or USAID. They’re already doing this with dozens of other pharmaceuticals, including for the exact same indication. For example, “about 3.7 billion doses of ivermectin have been distributed in mass drug administration campaigns globally over the past 30 years. Presently, ivermectin is approved for use in humans in several countries to treat onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, strongyloidiasis, and scabies.” Why hasn’t this already occurred?
The WHO estimates 10% of children experience renal damage from scabies infestations in resource poor areas (exactly where the majority of cases are). The number of people this ultimately trickles down to experiencing renal failure or sepsis from bacterial infections is a horrific sum.
Please start moving faster.
- The End