Investments in respiratory infectious disease research 1997–2010: a systematic analysis of UK funding

Head, Michael G; Fitchett, Joseph R; Cooke, Mary K; Wurie, Fatima B; Hayward, Andrew C; Lipman, Marc C; Atun, Rifat

• Categorising is subjective, and we do not take into account funding of overheads or the impact of the introduction of full economic costing. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 Tuberculosis also represents a substantial challenge to global health, accounting for 2.2% of all-cause DALYs lost world-wide, 1 and an estimated 1.4 million deaths in 2011. 3 The target of the WHO Global TB Plan is to reduce tuberculosis deaths to half of those recorded in 1990 by 2015, but it is thought that both Europe and Africa will fail to meet these goals. Control efforts are hampered by limited vaccine effectiveness, co-infection with HIV, insufficient diagnostic capacity in low income settings, prolonged treatment courses and the emergence of drug resistant strains. 3, 4 Globally an estimated 500,000 deaths annually are attributable to influenza. 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r p e e r r e v i e w o n l y 6 the aetiology of chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma, 12 chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, 13 and cystic fibrosis, 14 as well as acting as a trigger for acute cardiovascular events. 15 UK institutions have received an estimated £2.6 billion of public and charitable funding to carry out infectious disease research between 1997 and 2010, of which around one-third was designated as related to global health, 16 and according to estimates from Policy Cures, the UK ranks second globally in terms of the amount of R&D funding for infectious disease research. 17 Funding covers all types of science along the R&D value chain from pre-clinical to operational and implementation research. We report on the funding for respiratory infection-related research awarded to UK institutions. We identify areas of research strength and possible investment gaps in relation to respiratory global health that will be of relevance to policy-makers, funders and researchers, and briefly discuss how new approaches might help with allocating existing resources and identifying new sources of investment.