WHO Expert Report On R&D Financing Now Online

An expert working group under the auspices of the World Health Organization tasked with finding ways to finance research and development for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor has released its much-anticipated report.

The report is available here [pdf].

After analysing over 90 different proposals, the working group has drawn up a short list of mechanisms including three proposals for raising funds, five for optimal allocation of both existing and new funds, and two for improving efficiency in the R&D system.

The finance-raising proposals are: indirect taxes (for example on arms trade, on internet traffic, on airline travel, or on financial transactions), voluntary business or consumer contributions, and new donor funds (aimed at encouraging contributions from non-traditional donors such as China or India, or securing additional philanthropic funding).

Allocation mechanisms recommended are: product development partnerships, grants to smaller enterprises or for developing country trials, prizes for reaching an interim research milestone, prizes for end products, and advance purchase or procurement agreements.

Efficiency-improving recommendations include regulatory harmonisation – such as streamlining processes for ensuring drug safety, a process which the WHO is already attempting to do via its prequalification programme (IPW, WHO, 7 December 2009) – and the development of precompetitive R&D tools, or platforms.

The expert working group was created by – and seen as a key outcome of – the WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, agreed to in May 2008 (IPW, WHO, 29 May 2008).