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Public-Private Partnerships for Neglected Diseases: Opportunities to Address Pharmaceutical Gaps for Neglected Diseases

Every year, approximately US $70 billion is spent in health research but only about 10 percent of funding is targeted to the diseases that account for 90 percent of the global disease burden. The unavailability of medicines to people in developing countries results in enormous human and economic costs. The disconnect between disease burden and the medicines available is largely due to the fact that there is little or no economic incentive for the for-profit pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to research and develop medicines for people in poor countries where there will be no return on the substantial financial investment required to bring a drug to market. Legislative initiatives such as "Orphan Drug" statutes have been ineffective in developing medicines for the "neglected diseases" of people in developing countries.