Print“More funding is vital, and encouraging to see, but it’s just as important that the funds are spent wisely and well.”
Neglected diseases were a little less so in 2009 as global funding for research and development grew 8.2 percent to $3.2 billion despite the global recession, but investment shifted to basic research and away from funding the development of much needed new products, according to a survey from the independent research group Policy Cures. The organization’s third annual survey found that while basic research funding increased 21 percent in 2009, funding for Product Development Partnerships—not-for-profit groups that work with external partners around the world to conduct product development—actually fell by nearly 9 percent to $530 million. Product Development Partnerships manage nearly a quarter of global grant funding for neglected diseases with more than 140 neglected disease drug, vaccines and diagnostic projects now in the development pipeline, the report says.
“Funders need to be careful not to take their eye off the ball,” says Mary Moran, director of Policy Cures and author of the report. “More funding is vital, and encouraging to see, but it’s just as important that the funds are spent wisely and well.”
Increased public spending on domestic researchers is an understandable strategy in hard economic times, but only if it also achieves the aim of creating new medicines and vaccines for those in the developing world.”
The report found that neglected disease funding rose $239 million in 2009. Funding from public sector sources rose 14 percent or $259 million and industry funding grew 12.3 percent or $43 million, but funding from philanthropic sources fell about 9 percent or $63 million.
HIV/AIDS (35.7 percent), malaria (18.6 percent), and tuberculosis (17.6 percent), received the greatest amount of funding, accounting for 72 percent of all funding in 2009. That’s down from 77 percent in 2007, reflecting a greater distribution of funds among the 31 neglected diseases tracked in the survey.
Nevertheless, leprosy, trachoma, rheumatic fever, and Buruli ulcer remained at the bottom of the list as they managed to capture less than $11 million each or .3 percent each of global R&D investment.
February 17, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-paying_attention_to_neglected_diseases.html
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