The research gap
Many diseases affecting millions of the world’s poorest remain largely overlooked: countless people suffer in developing countries from sleeping sickness, lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma, and other “neglected diseases.” Many of these diseases have no safe and effective treatments, because these destitute sick do not constitute a sufficient market opportunity to attract commercial research and development (R&D). In fact, only 10% of R&D dollars go towards research into 90% of the world’s health problems.
Further explanation of the gaps left by our R&D system and their great human cost: coming soon!
Read more:
- “Rapid-Impact Interventions”: How a Policy of Integrated Control for Africa’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Could Benefit the Poor, by David H. Molyneux, Peter J. Hotez, Alan Fenwick, PLoS Medicine (November 2005).
