Delegates at this year’s World Health Assembly agreed to accelerate the development of the WHO Global Observatory on Health Research and Development. This is part of an overall plan to identify gaps in research and development (R&D), especially for diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries and attract little investment.
The observatory is a database of R&D projects and a key feature of WHO’s strategic R&D workplan. Endorsed by the Assembly in 2013, a demonstration version was made available at the beginning of 2016. It integrates available information on funding for health R&D, health products in the pipeline, clinical trials and research publications.
Delegates requested WHO to develop an operational plan that describes how the Observatory would work with a recommended new WHO Expert Committee on Health Research and Development to identify priorities for a proposed pooled fund. The fund would support health product R&D in line with the core principles of affordability, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and the principle of delinkage.
TDR Report key resource
Delegates asked WHO to take into account the TDR report, Health Product Research and Development Fund: a Proposal for Financing and Operation, that outlines how a fund could be set up and cost options.
The WHO workplan also includes 6 demonstration projects aimed at developing products. These include an initiative on R&D for visceral leishmaniasis; development of a vaccine against schistosomiasis; a single-dose cure for malaria; development of affordable biomarkers as diagnostics; open-source drug development for diseases of poverty and a multiplexed point-of-care test for acute febrile illness.
Delegates urged WHO's Member States to increase funding for the observatory, and to strengthen their own national R&D observatories. An operational plan for the observatory and expert committee is requested for next year’s 140th assembly. This includes terms of reference and a costed workplan.
For more information, contact Robert Terry