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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

India supports global funding of health R&D for poor-Aarti Dhar

WHO panel proposed treaty requires all governments to share cost
 
India supports a proposed legally binding global instrument that requires all governments to share the cost of research and development (R&D). The treaty, recommended by a World Health Organisation panel, will boost access to countries least able to pay for medical innovations but need it most. This would also delink profits from medical discoveries.

The “Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination” (CEWG) lays down a road map for the binding instrument to address the R&D needs of developing countries for Type II and Type III diseases — tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, kala-azar, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, chikungunya and other neglected tropical diseases.

Change in research and funding

The CEWG report, presented at the 65th World Health Assembly in Geneva recently, will change the way research and financing for drug and development takes place. “Generation R&D outcomes as public goods, freely available for further research and production, would delink R&D costs from product prices. This binding agreement would facilitate drug discovery and development which will be relevant to the diseases which afflict the poor and the vulnerable in the developing countries,'' India said in its intervention.Taxation aspects

Without mentioning any specific form of tax, the CEWG report says: “Countries should first consider at national level what tax options might be appropriate to them as a means of raising revenue to devote to health R&D.”

However, the CEWG highlights two taxes — Financial Transaction Tax and Tobacco Solidarity Contribution — as potential new sources of funding that could be channelled through international mechanism to supplement national resources.

All countries must commit to research

It recommends that “all countries should commit themselves to spending at least 0.01 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) on government funded R&D devoted to meeting the health needs of developing countries.''

A WHA resolution has impressed upon the member-states the need to establish or strengthen mechanisms for improved R&D coordination in collaboration with the WHO and other relevant partners, and calls upon the private sector, academic institutions and non-governmental organisations to increase investment in health R&D related to Type II and III diseases and the specific R&D needs of developing countries in relation to Type I diseases like diabetes.

All-members are required to spell out their road map at the next WHA in 2013. Some developed countries are opposing the move on the ground that their contribution to health research is adequate.

In 2010, three diseases received most of the global funding for R&D: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Despite being the leading child-killer in developing countries, diarrhoeal diseases received less than 5 per cent of global R&D funding in 2010.

Neglected diseases

Leprosy, Buruli ulcer, trachoma — an eye infection that can lead to irreversible blindness — and rheumatic fever are among the neglected diseases of poverty that occur in overcrowded, remote and poor areas. They received less than $10 million each.

In 2010, eight of the top 12 governments that provided public funding for R&D in neglected diseases (including HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB) cut their spending, according to the G-FINDER (Global Funding of Innovation for Neglected Diseases) survey.