Distribution of R&D funding flows for neglected diseases by country, funder, and recipient organizations

Published: February 2019

The product-related R&D funding flows for neglected diseases are collected from the Policy Cures Research G-FINDER survey.For 2017, funding data were collected from 197 private, public and philanthropic organizations, on all types of product-related R&D and basic research and platform technology investments covering 33 neglected diseases. (Note: Disease names used here have been reclassified; see the classifications and standards section for the rationale and approach).

What you see

The data visualization illustrates the trend in investments for neglected diseases from 2007-2017 (top chart), their distribution by funder country (second chart, left), disease (second chart, right), funder organization (third chart, left), funding category (third chart, right) and recipient organization (bottom chart). All funding data have been adjusted for inflation, and are reported in 2017 US dollars (US$) (adjustment performed by the data source).

Data can be filtered by year, WHO Region, type of funder or type of recipients by selecting the relevant category (or more than one) from the tick-box or legend key on the left side of the charts.

Points to note:

The G-FINDER survey data underestimate the total R&D investments for these diseases (as reporting is incomplete) and need to be interpreted cautiously due to the scope restrictions of the survey (outlined below).
The reported funding flows by country exclude investments by the private sector, which is reported separately in an aggregate form (referred to as “private sector, multiple countries” in the country list). Therefore, the total investments by country only represent public and philanthropic sources in those countries.
Over the 11 years of investments on R&D for neglected diseases (2007-2017):
-- The United States of America contributed almost two thirds (US$ 23.98 billion) of the total investments on neglected diseases from public and philanthropic sources, followed (aside from the private sector) by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (US$ 2.14 billion) (second chart, left). Investments by the private sector (referred to as “private sector, multiple countries” on the country list) were a total of US$ 4.58 billion (second chart, left).
--HIV/AIDS continued to receive the highest investments, followed by malaria and tuberculosis (US$ 13.57, 6.46, and 6.32 billion respectively; second chart, right).
--Investments by the private sector (select “private sector” in the left-side filter by funder type) have increased since 2012 (top chart), with tuberculosis (US$ 1.30 billion), malaria (US$ 1.20 billion) and HIV/AIDS (US$ 0.55 billion) constituting the top three diseases they target (second chart, right).
--Across all diseases, the top funder was the public sector, (i.e. the United States of America’s National Institutes of Health [NIH]), followed by a philanthropic organization, (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and the private sector (aggregate pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies), with US$ 15.35 billion, US$ 6.28 billion and US$ 4.53 billion investments respectively (third chart, left). Together they account for more than 70% of all investments in R&D for neglected diseases (hold the Ctrl key and select the first three bars in the third chart, left side, to display their total investments in the top chart).
--Among the recipient organizations, the United States of America’s National Institutes of Health [NIH] (Public sector)) and PATH (product development partnership) received the third and fourth highest amount of investments after the private sector and a group of multiple product developers of unspecified affiliation (bottom chart).

Scope and limitations

The data must be interpreted cautiously because of the specific scope restrictions of the G-FINDER survey (see link below for detail). The scope of the G-FINDER survey is determined by applying the following three criteria for neglected diseases. (R&D investments which do not meet these criteria are excluded.)

The disease disproportionately affects people in developing countries.
There is a need for new products (i.e. there is either no existing product, or improved or additional products are needed).
There is market failure in developing these new products (i.e. there is an insufficient commercial market to attract R&D by private industry).

For some diseases, only R&D funding for developing-country specific serotypes/strains or products are included. For example, only genotypes 4, 5, and 6 are included for Hepatitis C.

In addition, the funding data from industry is available in an aggregated form. This means that funding levels by funder, funding category and other breakdowns substantially underestimate the actual investments in these categories since data by the private sector (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies) are presented separately within the scope of G-FINDER and in the data visualization above.

Note that this latest data visualization does not contain data for R&D funding for Ebola and other viral haemorrhagic fevers (contained in the visualization published by the Observatory in July 2017) as the data for these have not been updated by Policy Cures Research. A separate report focusing on emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) identified in the WHO R&D Blueprint will address these; its data will be visualized and provided in the Observatory once available.

Note: For this set of analysis, developing-country-specific research on therapeutic vaccines for HIV/AIDS was included with vaccines R&D as a restricted category, reflecting emerging research into broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies (bNAbs) and their potential use in developing countries.

G-FINDER scope and restrictions

To explore the data further:

Filter data by year, WHO region, type of funder or type of recipient by selecting the relevant category (or more than one) from the tick-box or legend key on the left side of the visualization.
Click on a bar or point on a line graph to filter data for the desired selection.
-- For example, click on a disease name in the second right chart to display the respective annual trend in investments in the top chart and other specific information for that disease in the other charts.
Hover the cursor over the line on the top chart or on a bar in a graphic to see more information in a popup window.
Undo a selection by clicking ‘undo’ or ‘reset’ near the bottom of the page or by clicking the same element again.