Health Innovation Networks to Help Developing Countries Address Neglected Diseases -- Morel et al. 309 (5733): 401 -- Science

Health Innovation Networks to Help Developing Countries Address Neglected Diseases -- Morel et al. 309 (5733): 401 -- Science: "mproving the health of the poorest people in the developing world depends on the development and deployment of many varieties of health innovations, including new drugs, vaccines, devices, and diagnostics, as well as new techniques in process engineering and manufacturing, management approaches, software, and policies in health systems and services. In developed countries, philanthropic and government donors have created and invested more than $1 billion in global product development partnerships (PDPs) to develop and help to ensure access to new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for diseases of the poor (1). These PDPs have made major progress in a relatively short time period (2) but continue to face many challenges.
All developing countries can undertake health innovation to varying degrees. Some developing countries, however, are more scientifically advanced than others and are starting to reap benefits from decades of investments in education, health research infrastructure, and manufacturing capacity. We refer to these as innovative developing countries (IDCs) (3, 4).
It is a challenge to get complete data on health research spending. According to the most recent available data, public spending on health research by developing countries totaled at least $2 billion (5). This number does not include China, for which data were not available. That investment, which has already led to important innovations, is projected to continue to grow (3, 5�7). Furthermore, lower labor and other costs have the potential to magnify the impact of this investment. To put it in a different perspective, just 1/10th of these IDC public health research resources amounts to more than all that "