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.

Read more:

• "NTDs: Diseases of the Bottom Billion", by Karolina Maciag, Jason Zhang (December 2010).
• "The Global Health Crisis and Our Nation's Research Universities", by Sandeep P. Kishore, Gloria Tavera, Peter J. Hotez (February 23, 2010).   
• “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).