Funds flock to fundamental threats

Tuesday August 4th, 2009

Diseases that pose a "fundamental threat" to humanity tend to soak up massive research funding, according to an analysis published yesterday.

Common diseases that kill millions every year get "minimal" resources in contrast with new diseases that may kill just a few hundred, according to Professor Jeremy Shiffman, writing in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation.

As the world is gripped by alarm about the H1N1 swine flu, Professor Shiffman recalls the history of SARS.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome emerged in the far east and killed "only several hundred people" and attracted enormous resources, Professor Shiffman, from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, USA, argues.

He writes: "Meanwhile, other communicable diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases, that kill millions of people each year - and for which cost-effective interventions exist - attract minimal donor resources."

By the beginning of the century, as much as one third of donor funding for research and treatment was going to HIV/AIDS, he said - yet it was responsible for just five per cent of death and sickness in low and middle income countries.

Professor Shiffman advises any community seeking to raise funds and attract attention to a health problem to make the case that it is "a fundamental threat to human well-being, national security and/or economic development."

Tags: Flu & Viruses | General Health | North America | World Health

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