G-Finder provides overview of global and European neglected diseases funding in 2007

The first annual G-Finder, a survey of global investment into Research and Development of new products for neglected diseases, was published on 4 February. This annual report shows funding provided by public, private and philanthropic funders. The statistics of the first report show that in 2007, the European Commission was the third largest public funder, and that EDCTP was the third largest Public Development Partnership (PDP) funder. These statistics are encouraging for EDCTP, and at the same time they support our call for increased EU funding for neglected diseases.

The rationale behind creating the G-Finder was the need expressed by neglected diseases funders for comprehensive data on investment into R&D of new pharmaceutical products for the prevention and treatment of poverty-related diseases.  The report covers neglected diseases, not only HIV/AIDS tuberculosis and malaria but also diseases such as dengue and meningitis. The report shows that in 2007, just over USD 2.5 billion of funding was spent on neglected diseases R&D. It also shows that 90.5 % comes from public and philanthropic funders. The G-Finder was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and produced by the George Institute of International Health.

Funding by disease
The statistics show that the lion’s share of funding goes to the ‘big three’: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria (please see split below). Just under 23% is spent on other neglected diseases such as dengue and meningitis.

R&D funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in 2007

European funding of neglected diseases
Some statistics relating to European funding of neglected diseases R&D are:

• The European Commission (EC) is the third largest funder of neglected diseases after US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• EDCTP is the third largest PDP funder after IAVI and MMV
• The four largest government funders are the United States of America, the European Commission, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

Call for increase of European funding
The statistics in the G-Finder report show that there is significant effort among a considerable numbers of funders to fight neglected diseases. It also shows that there are still gaps in funding that need to be addressed. One of the examples given is the gap between high expenditure on drugs and vaccines, and low expenditure on diagnostics. This gap has been raised in the past and as a response to this, EDCTP will launch a call for TB diagnostics on World TB Day (24 March 2009). Another gap is that of US expenditure compared with EU expenditure. EDCTP aims to keep up the efforts to reduce this gap in cooperation with its European partners. EDCTP has already seen a significant increase of its neglected diseases expenditure in 2008, as well as an increase of the number of partners contributing to the programme.

More information
Download the G-FINDER full report