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If you were asked how to spend limited health research dollars what would you say?
One common-sense answer would be to prioritize expenditures based on the number of people affected by a disease or condition. In other words, the more people dying or adversely affected, the more money should be channelled toward prevention or a cure.
So, would it surprise you to learn that only roughly 10 per cent of all investment in global health research is spent to study 90 per cent of the world's health problems?(1) This misallocation of funds, commonly called the 10/90 gap,(2) manifests itself in many ways. For example, pneumonia, diarrhea, tuberculosis and malaria, which together account for more than 20 per cent of the disease burden in the world, receive less than one per cent of the total public and private funds devoted to health research ($73.5-billion US in 1998).(3)
Why care?
There are many good reasons why those of us in wealthy countries like Canada should be concerned about the 10/90 gap, aside from its fundamental immorality. Lack of funding for research into the health problems of low- and middle-income countries is reflected in lack of progress in improving health. Poor health tends to worsen poverty, which, in a vicious cycle, inhibits improvements in health.(4)
In other words, aid to improve the economies of poor countries may not work unless it includes measures to improve health, which requires health research. To fight poverty we must improve health. To improve health we must harness rigorously conducted health research.
In addition to the economic argument, people in high-income countries must be concerned about the 10/90 gap because health problems in low- and middle-income countries have a way of crossing borders. Infectious diseases can move from one continent to another as quickly as an airplane flies.
Still, some might argue that health research everywhere benefits all humankind and that countries at different stages of development can simply apply the work of other countries to their own situation. However, according to the Global Forum for Health Research, created by the World Health Organization, the direct transfer of findings from high-income countries to low- and middle-income countries is limited for many reasons, including:
[Symbol Not Transcribed] [filled square] Communicable diseases that are uncommon...