Combining health and social protection measures to reach the ultra ...

Research resources13 + 1*- HIV/AIDS (see Global Fund below)12 + 1*- Malaria (see Global Fund below)8 Health policies and systems7 Chagas’, leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, lymphaticfilariasis – individually or in combination with each other6 Microbicides5 + 1* Tuberculosis (see Global Fund below)5 Vaccines of the poor4 Onchocerciasis and/or trachoma3 Micronutrients/Vitamin A3 Reproductive health2 Dengue1 Communicable diseases – prevention through handwashing with soap1* The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria1 Guinea worm1 Hookworm1 Lassa fever1 Leprosy1 Meningitis1 Polio1 Schistosomiasis1 TetanusSource: Extracted from data found on the website for Initiative on Public PrivatePartnerships for Health, www.ippph.org, accessed 1-8 February 2006.Table 1: Number of partnerships with associated disease or issue3. Advocacy and policy. The third type of PPP concentrateson health policies and systems and advocacy. Most ofthe partnerships that fall in this advocacy and policycategory however, also have some technical, access, orproduct development component as well for example,GAVI, Drugs and Neglected Diseases inititative (DNDi),Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), SIGN.Of the 78 active partnerships, the number of partnershipsthat focus on certain diseases or health policy issues is set outin Table 1. Categorization is not an exact science aspartnerships may deal in any combination with productdistribution, product development, and/or policy and healthsystems issues between or among various diseases.Twenty-four public-private partnerships devote the majorityof their efforts to developing medicines, vaccines, ordiagnostics for diseases of developing countries includingmalaria, tuberculosis, HIV, leishmaniasis, and otherscollectively referred to as “neglected diseases” (see Figure 2).Of the 24 PPPs for Product Development, 9 are devoted todeveloping medicines and/or microbicides, 11 are committedto vaccine development, one is focused on diagnosticproducts, and three are involved with the development of acombination of medicines, vaccines and/or diagnostics. Fivepartnerships focus exclusively on reproductive health issues,four focus on malaria and two are committed to tuberculosisand HIV/AIDS respectively.Current situation with regard to PPPs forhealthThere were early perceptions and criticism that thesepartnerships would lead to distortion of national policies andpublic health funding, parallel systems of drugs supply etc.However these have been largely dispelled throughprogramme evaluation and assessments which have shown apositive impact – although it is true to say that many of thepartnerships are still too young to measure real impact.The raised awareness and stimulation of research anddevelopment on drugs/prevention for neglected diseases hascertainly changed the field over the last seven years. There isnow a very crowded landscape of PPPs, particularly in a fewsectors as illustrated by Figure 3, which has changedconsiderably since the early partnerships were formed. Mostof the neglected diseases are addressed by at least one PPPproviding research and development, drugs and technicalsupport and/or some funding.The recent analysis of drug development for neglected5432101984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 20041984–2004Figure 2: Number of Public-Private Partnerships for Product Development created by year from 1984 to 2004Extracted from partnership database found on website for Initiative onPublic-Private Partnerships for Health, www.ippph.org, accessed varioustimes December 2004.134 ✜ Global Forum Update on Research for Health Volume 4