“We’ve seen that over the last decade the U.S. government has funded nearly half of the total global investment in research. And that that investment is translated to new products that are saving lives around the world,” she said.
One example is a new meningitis vaccine. The report estimates the MenAfriVac vaccine will prevent nearly 440,000 cases of meningitis over the next 10 years. There’s also a new test to diagnose tuberculosis. The Xpert MTB/RIF test could triple the number of people diagnosed with drug resistant TB.
Competing interests
Christenson acknowledged the report’s being released at a time when President Obama and congress are debating where to spend and where to cut.
“In this era where we really are under a constrained economic environment everything is at risk. No, we certainly never want to pit one important program against another. What we would hope is that policymakers see the true impact of the investment,” he said.
However, Christenson said the coalition is not just worried about budget cuts. It warns against flatlined funding where no increase in funding is approved.
“There are lots of tools that are stuck in research phases because we don’t have sufficient funding. For one example, what are called neglected tropical diseases, the U.S. investment is typically at the very early stages of research, but not at the later stages where we’re actually taking that early science and translating it into a product that works,” she said.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25