By Michelle Childs, Policy Advocacy Director, DNDi
For the past two decades, large multinational pharmaceutical companies have increasingly withdrawn from researching medicines for infectious diseases — particularly those affecting poor and vulnerable populations — while focusing instead on cancer, obesity and autoimmune diseases.
This is a textbook market failure. Infectious diseases affect hundreds of millions of people each year. They also present pandemic risks. Better drugs, diagnostics and vaccines would bring huge social benefits to the whole world. But the pharma industry has little interest in investing in research because finding new treatments for infectious diseases like dengue fever or sleeping sickness is costly, uncertain and offers less return on investment. Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, AbbVie, Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Allergan are among the companies that have partially or completely stopped research on medicines for infectious diseases.
