Senior fellow Charles Kenny's piece on advanced market commitments was featured in CNN.
From the Article
Innovation isn’t necessarily a word most people associate with aid programs. The popular image is of aid organizations too often just building one darn road after another - or sending off armies of consultants to offer irrelevant and unheeded advice.
But, thankfully, there’s a lot more to aid agencies than stodgy bureaucrats shoveling money out the door. One recent example is called the advanced market commitment, and it is helping to develop new treatments for diseases, which kill millions in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Developing countries are home to a whole load of diseases that hardly affect rich countries any loner. Diarrhea, the subject of late-night comedy in the U.S., is the leading cause of death amongst children in the developing world. Malaria - prevalent in the south of the United States a few generations ago - is now limited to poorer parts of the planet.
One reason these diseases persist in poor countries is there is a lack of cheap and effective vaccines to prevent them.
And here’s the problem: Why would drug makers spend money on research and development for vaccines that affect people in low-income countries who have no more than $10 a year on healthcare when these drug manufacturers could be working on treatments for ailments in the rich world - where per capita expenditure on healthcare is closer to $6,000 per year as it is in the U.S. according to data from the World Bank?
Imagine these drug makers create the perfect vaccine for a tropical disease, what hope could pharmacy companies have that they’ll sell enough of the drug to make back all of their costs?