The Economist looks at innovation in global health
The Economist today takes stock of the state of global health innovation and how new advances are being funded worldwide. Our friends at GAVI and The Global Fund are singled out as displaying progress in “clever fund-raising, cautious spending and the precise measurement of outcomes.”
You can read the full piece here.
As well as appealing to the charity of ordinary people, agencies are finding new ways to raise money from lenders. A trail has been blazed by the GAVI alliance, a public-private partnership that funnels money towards vaccines for neglected diseases in the poor world. It has raised more than $1 billion in short-term financing by issuing bonds backed by sovereign pledges of aid money in future years. By making a big sum available today, rather than promising a trickle over a long period, the project has helped to create the economies of scale that make widespread vaccination possible. The Global Fund also has new ideas; this year it will launch its own exchange-traded fund—based on an index of firms investing in health and development—aimed at both traditional investors and “socially responsible” ones.
Another approach is to encourage firms to pool patents, which lowers the cost and accelerates the pace of drug development. Clever researchers at modest institutions may benefit from knowledge gained in more prestigious places. Under pressure from the WHO and anti-poverty activists, the drugs industry has started to relax its patent-protection policy. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a British drugs giant, said early in 2009 that it was ready to share certain patents (but not those for HIV). GSK and Pfizer, an American rival, then announced they would combine their patents for HIV into a joint research effort, called ViiV. In December UNITAID launched its own plan to create a global pool for HIV patents. The agency’s board will hold a final vote on this in February; Mr Douste-Blazy expects ViiV and some other big firms to take part.
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January 12, 2010 at 12:39 am
I appreciate the good work being done by ONE to eradicate hunger and disease across the world. However, I fail to realise why Asia has been left out from this endeavour. Asia, like Africa is another continent where hunger, poverty and dreadedful communicable diseases are widespread. Millions are dying and the apathy of the govt, be it constraint of funds or willingness to do something about its own people, is taking a toll on the population. We do need to spread wings across Asia and fast. I’m an Indian and I have read that people are so poor in some states that they eat half burnt cadaver after the family of the dead person, whose last rites have just been performed, leaves. A large percentage of population doesnt have clean drinking water. They live in slums. Feed on leftovers or go hungry for days.
India should also be a focus country for ONE and I am ready to make a start if you feel we can do something concrete to alleviate the poor of their plight in this country.
Ashish