WHO Criticized Over R&D Funding

While the World Health Organization's health R&D budget iscomparatively large, it is insufficiently focused or managed to offer real hope of progress in the availability of new medicines for the developing, let alone the developed, world, according to Trevor Jones, director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

Prof Jones told the Financial Times World Pharmaceuticals conference (Marketletter March 31 and this issue, page 11) that discussions he has had with the World Bank indicate that financing can be made available for effective health care provision, provided that there is clarity over priorities and the availability of effective products. In view of the imperatives for better treatment and the WHO's level of funding, it is imperative that a way be found for more efficient collaboration in order to increase the leverage of science into practice, especially in the field of orphan diseases, he said.

Furthermore, he told the meeting, in the spectrum of wealth from the poorest to the richest there is a number of middle-income countries whose governments could, and indeed should, devote more funds to directed R&D in diseases which affect their populations.