references
ADVOCACY, COMMUNICATIONS & FUNDRAISING
In 2015, in response to these and other concerns, DNDi called on governments to act to address the core problems that need to be tackled: • the lack of a global body to identifying R&D gaps and needs; • the lack of global agreed priority setting; • the lack of effective monitoring and coordination of R&D efforts; • and the lack of globally agreed norms that guide R&D initiatives to ensure sharing of data and knowledge and the affordability of end products. DNDi has advocated that a series of progressive policy steps be taken to re-orient the global biomedical R&D system so that it responds to patient needs, neglected by our predominant reliance on commercial incentives to spur drug development. In particular, a political process should be launched to negotiate a binding global agreement on the financing, prioritization, and coordination of medical innovation, and on the norms required to enable the discovery, development, and delivery of and equitable access to innovations of public health importance. Norms should be developed that guide R&D actors and condition funding of research in order to ensure innovation with access.
DNDi’S INNOVATIVE FUNDING MECHANISM AWARD TO RUTA N
Ruta N Medellín, an organization based in Medellin, Colombia, which focuses on knowledge as a primary source for research and development, was awarded DNDi’s Innovative Funding Mechanism Award for its funding of DNDi’s cutaneous leishmaniasis project Anfoleish (see page 32) for 2015-2016.
Carlos Castro and Elkin Echeverri (two first from the left), Ruta N, receiving DNDi’s Award with Cecilia Castillo (centre), DNDi, from Prof Marcel Tanner, Chairman of the Board.
A call in PLOS from 13 international health experts In a 2015 call published al R&D Fund and A Global Biomedic Health ovations of Public Mechanism for Inn in PLOS, Importance DNDi, together with a group of renowned global health experts, called for the creation of an R&D fund and mechanism. The proposal centred on the creation of a pooled fund that would complement existing funding mechanisms and secure long-term and sustainable financing primarily from governments but also other donors. It would be owned and overseen by governments with a strong link to an intergovernmental agency like the World Health Organization (WHO), but private and philanthropic actors and civil society would be involved as stakeholders. Existing multilateral funds such as
ESSAY
the Global Fund, GAVI, or UNITAID, could serve as models. In addition to the fund, the proposal called for a mechanism that could act as an umbrella framework to cover all disease areas that suffer from chronic under-investment in R&D. Demonstrating the impact of the DNDi model as a part of the WHO CEWG process In 2015, DNDi also actively raised these messages in multiple policy processes now looking at questions of innovation and access. Foremost among these is a decade-long process at WHO on coordination and financing of R&D, known as the CEWG. It includes a recommendation for the establishment of a global agreement as the most appropriate way to underpin priority setting, coordination, and sustainable financing of affordable biomedical innovations of public health importance. DNDi has actively participated in this process, including with one of the “demonstration projects” chosen to show the effectiveness of alternative, innovative, and sustainable financing and coordination approaches. DNDi’s proposal for a large-scale R&D project for leishmaniasis was thus awarded $2.3 million from a pilot pooled fund for health R&D hosted by WHO TDR in 2015.
ICMR AND DNDi REINFORCING R&D COLLABORATION
