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

Published: October 2024

The product-related R&D funding flows for neglected diseases are collected from the Policy Cures Research G-FINDER survey. For 2022, funding data were collected from private, public and philanthropic organizations, on all types of product-related R&D, basic research and platform technology investments for neglected diseases. (Note: Disease names used here have been reclassified; see the  classifications and standards section for the rationale and approach).

See also:

What you see

The data visualization illustrates the trend in investments for neglected diseases from 2007 to 2022 (chart A), their distribution by funder country (chart B), disease (chart C), funder organization (chart D), funding category (chart E), recipient organization (chart F) and recipient country (chart G). All funding data have been adjusted for inflation, and are reported in 2022 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 needs to be interpreted cautiously due to the scope restrictions of the survey.
  • 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 16 years of investments on R&D for neglected diseases (2007-2022):
    -- The United States of America contributed over two thirds (US$ 42.8 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$ 3.88 billion) and the European Union (US$ 2.08 billion) (chart B). Investments by the private sector (referred to as “private sector, multiple countries” on the country list) were a total of US$ 6.89 billion (chart B). The European Union did not increase their investments in 2022, despite increasing every year from 2016 to 2021. Many countries reduced the investments in 2022. (select each country of interest in chart B and view the trend line in chart A)
    -- HIV/AIDS continued to receive the highest investments, followed by tuberculosis and malaria (US$ 23.59, 10.99, and10.88 billion respectively) with the majority of the investments coming from the United States of America (84.39%, 63.36%, 59.97% for each disease respectively) (select each disease of interest in chart C and view the top bar in chart B).
    -- Investments by the private sector philanthropic foundations (select “private sector philanthropic…” in the left-side purple filter by funder type) have remained steady since 2015 (chart A), with malaria (US$ 3.13 billion), HIV/AIDS (US$ 2.73 billion) and tuberculosis (US$ 2.51 billion) constituting the top three diseases they target (chart C), and snakebite envenoming and onchocerciasis receiving their highest increase between 2019 and 2020 (select the disease of interest in chart C and view the trend line in chart A). The top three funding organizations are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (82.02%; US$ 10.72 billion) , followed by Wellcome Trust (12.62%, US$ 1.65billion) and Médecins sans Frontières (1.08%; US$ 0.14 billion).
    -- Across all diseases, the top funder was in the public sector (i.e. the United States of America’s National Institutes of Health [NIH]), followed by a philanthropic organization, (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and the private sector (aggregate pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies), with US$ 27.54 billion, US$ 10.73 billion and US$ 8.07 billion investments respectively (chart D). 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 chart D to display their total investments in chart A). Investment from the public sector institutions category continued to decrease to 2016 levels after a continuous increase from 2015 to 2019. Investment from the public sector multilaterals category continued its downward trend with a decrease of almost 50% between 2021 and 2022 (-US$ 41 million) (select "public sector institutions" and “public sector multilaterals” respectively in the left-side filter by funder type, then view chart A and chart D).
    -- Among the recipient organizations, the United States of America’s National Institutes of Health [NIH] (public sector institution) and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (academic and other research institutions) received the third and fourth highest amount of investments after the aggregated pharmaceuticals an biotechnology companies and a group undisclosed recipients of unspecified affiliation (chart F).
    -- Overall, over 50% of all recipient organizations were located in the United States of America (Chart G).

 

Scope and limitations of the data source

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).

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic slightly altered the participation in the 2019 G-Finder survey, which meant that some of the reduction in funding in the previous analysis was the result of the reduced reporting rather than an actual drop in funding. In the 2020 report, some of these 2019 figures were reviewed to correct these drops and supersede the numbers presented in previous analysis.

Histoplasmosis (here under Mycoses) and scabies were added to the G-Finder survey scope. This includes R&D for all product categories for both diseases, all basic research for histoplasmosis and basic research that is explicitly targeted at low- and middle-income country (LMIC)-related disease burden for scabies. LMIC-focused basic research on rotavirus and Enterotoxigenic E. coli (both under Diarrhoeal diseases) were also included. And restriction requiring hepatitis C vaccine R&D to be LMIC-specific has been relaxed. This increase in scope accounts for no more than 0.2% of global funding in 2020.


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 chart C to display the respective annual trend in investments in chart A and other specific information for that disease in the other charts.
  • Hover the cursor over the line on chart A 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.