by Dish Staff
Charles Kenny remarks that new Ebola treatments are in the works only because “the Department of Defense had taken interest in the disease as a bioterror threat and was financing development of the drug ZMapp as a potential response”:
Ebola is the exception: Only a little more than 1 percent of new drugs approved between 1975 and 2004 were designed to address tropical diseases that account for more than 10 percent of the years lost to premature death and disability worldwide. Research and trials for tropical diseases focusing on cheap prophylactics, such as vaccines, and easily administered treatments for sufferers should be a priority for global support.
Funding is only part of the problem.
A lot of resources at the country level are wasted on doctors who don’t bother to diagnose, health-care workers who don’t turn up, and expensive hospitals catering only to the elite. While the WHO has some significant accomplishments in global health—not least negotiating the International Health Regulations themselves and leading the fight to eradicate smallpox and polio—it is far from a paragon of effectiveness. The WHO has undertaken some reforms since then, but a 2011 U.K. government review of the organization suggested it was “weak” in some areas, from financial resource management through transparency to its focus on poor countries.
Jeremy Youde points his finger at thrifty governments rather than the WHO:
For an international organization tasked with overseeing global responses to health emergencies, WHO is woefully under-resourced. Over the past two years, the organization has seen its budget decrease by 12 percent and cut more than 300 jobs. The current budget saw cuts to WHO’s outbreak and crisis response of more than 50 percent from the previous budget, from $469 million in 2012-13 to $228 million for 2014-15. This is the very budget line that the organization needs to rely upon in order to respond to Ebola. After it announced it needed $71 million to implement its Ebola response plan, WHO now has to hope member-states or private organizations agree to contribute.
(Chart from Quartz.)
The Dish 