29 March 2011 - Geneva - The Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership have released the second edition of a 2010 report on funding trends for tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D)
The report covers the same 2005 to 2009 period as the first edition but adds new and corrected information from product development partnerships such as Aeras, FIND, TB Alliance, TBVAC and TBVI, as well as revised data from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
The new report identifies an additional US $5 million of spending on R&D in 2009 but concludes that the funding available still falls far short of the recommended USD$2 billion per year needed to develop new tools to prevent, diagnose, and treat TB.
With five years of comprehensive data, Tuberculosis Research and Development: 2010 Report on Tuberculosis Research Funding trends, 2005-2009 documents global progress against funding targets set by the Stop TB Partnership in 2006 in the Global Plan to Stop TB: 2006-2015, a 10 year implementation and research strategy to eliminate TB as a global health threat by 2050.
Across six R&D areas, the report offers year-on-year funding trends, and a comprehensive analysis of the top ten funders for 2009. With the launch of the new Global Plan to Stop TB: 2011-2015, the Stop TB Partnership’s funding targets are now aligned with TAG’s.
Furthermore, the revised Global Plan includes funding targets for fundamental science and operational research - two key research areas necessary for the development of new tools and evaluation of their effective implementation in programmatic settings.