Over two thirds of the one million new cases of the neglected tropical disease “Cutaneous Leishmaniasis” (CL) occurring annually are found in only six countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, and Syria (https://www.dndi.org/diseases-projects/leishmaniasis/). If left untreated, the CL skin wounds caused by a sand-fly contaminated with parasites leave disfiguring scars especially in the face. If treated with conventional antimony chemotherapy, this is expensive for Public Health Care in less wealthy countries (approx. € 20 for the lesion of an adult patient) and implies potential serious adverse effects as well an unsatisfactory cosmetic outcome. 

Our non-profit NGO promotes access to care with essential medicine (PACEM) as a human right. Since 2003 we have invested into Research and Clinical Development of CL in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, and Syria. Our NGO was recently rewarded for 15 years of effort with a special approval granted by the German Health authorities (BfArM) for our new medical device LeiProtect®. This filmogenic dressing of the chronic CL wounds, containing an oxidizing mineral principle (OMP), promotes healing at low costs and improves the cosmetics of disfiguring scars in the face. 

The OMP did this in 2014/15 with a non-approval magistral preparation even in the most difficult cases of the recurrence of  CL previously treated with chemotherapy, called “leishmania recidivans” or “lupoid leishmania”. Iranian researchers are about to submit a publication on their results obtained in cooperation with us from 2014 to 2015. They have asked us to help with a donation of our now registered LeiProtect®, produced in a German GMP-certified institution, for the coming CL wound season starting in November 2018 in Mashhad. Our policy is to validate our LeiProtect® in foreign leishmania endemic countries and to out-license LeiProtect® to Pasteur Institutes in CL endemic countries, where it can be produced for local needs at a far lower cost than in Germany . 

At present, the economic sanctions imposed by America against Iran do not allow the Iranian leishmania centers:
1) to buy Leiprotect® from us, which is cheaper than the conventional treatment with antimony chemotherapy (€ 10 per medium sized lesion of 2 cm in diameter);
2) to produce it in the Iranian Pasteur institute, as the jet stream mixer from the German company YSTRAL needed to produce the gel is on the list of products which are not allowed to be sold to Iran. 

Please help Leishmania patients in Iran affected by economic sanctions. Your donation of only € 10 will finance the treatment of one potentially disfiguring CL face lesion in Mashhad. Our aim is to help a minimum of 1,000 patients, with the kind support of an Iranian scientist currently working at Freiburg University. He can take the LeiProtect® vials with an official German certificate for the Iranian custom authorities from Freiburg to Mashhad in November 2018.