Keep focus on emerging infections, Disease X: analysts

根据新的数据分析，针对新兴的传染病的研究资金很少能够到达这些疾病造成最大危害的国家，这突显了当疾病爆发停止头条新闻时，资金中的飙升如何落后。

Despite rapid growth of global spending to tackle emerging infectious diseases, which largely impact the developing world, much of the basic research and development takes place in industrial countries — usually those that provide the funding. This is according to thelatest G-Finder report，由全球健康智囊团政策汇编，治愈研究并今天发表。

发现美国是最大的新兴传染病研究捐助者，但也是最大的资金接受者。在2014年至2018年之间，该国为世界卫生组织确定的优先疾病提供了80％的全球公共资金R&D Blueprintfor action to prevent epidemics. These include Ebola, Zika, coronaviruses and the尚未知道的疾病x。

“We’ll never be prepared for the next pandemic if we only invest in R&D targeting diseases grabbing headlines at the time.”

Nick Chapman, chief executive, Policy Cures Research.

世界卫生组织R＆D蓝图确定的重点疾病的研究资金中的峰值和跌落率是为了预防流行病的行动。

Paul Barnsley, a senior analyst at Policy Cures Research and co-author of the report, tellsscidev.netthat the picture given by the data may be slightly skewed, as rich nations are better at providing numbers, whereas other major funders, such as China or Brazil, are less willing or able to share details of their spending. However, he agrees there is a “strong correlation” between who gives the money and who gets it.

他说：“我们确实发现资助者喜欢为国内组织提供资金。”“这被视为您创建本地基础设施和国家冠军的一大批资金。”

Multinational companies’ (MNCs) funding of emerging infectious diseases research has been outstripped by money coming from public bodies in high income countries (HICs).

Making headlines

报告发现，2014年至2018年之间的研发资金主要是针对吸引公众注意的疾病，而不是防止未来的流行病或解决造成最大健康负担的疾病。

“The degree of imbalance between diseases is striking, and it impacts R&D,” Barnsley says. “Funding is very much driven by epidemics. It does not square with a forward-looking approach.”

Recipients of emerging infectious diseases R&D funding, which largely comes from high income countries, include academic and research institutes, private small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and multinational companies.

The issue is best illustrated by data on coronavirus research in the years before the COVID-19 outbreak. Funding for coronaviruses — Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) — made up just 4.6 per cent of total basic research funding for emerging infectious diseases between 2016 and 2018 (no data was available for earlier years). Total annual funding for coronaviruses stood at US$41 million in 2018.

By comparison, funding for Ebola research skyrocketed from $178 million in 2014 to $594 million in 2015, the height of the West African outbreak. As of 2018, it was hovering around $360 million a year, but the report’s authors expect funding levels will drop sharply as Ebola fades from public consciousness.

同样，Zika Research在2015年仅获得了600万美元，但在巴西在2016年宣布公共卫生紧急情况之后，这笔款项在2017年增加到2.43亿美元。

“[W]e’ll never be prepared forthe next pandemic如果我们只投资于当时的研发目标疾病，那时就会吸引头条新闻。

The research world is on alert for疾病x— the name used to describe a previously unknown illness that becomes a pandemic. The mystery disease is seen as one of the greatest threats to humanity by many health policymakers.

In 2016, Disease X and ‘other’ research, including platform technologies and broad-spectrum antivirals, received about $14 million. Just two years later this was more than $171 million, according to theG-Finder data。

“共同化”

These trends were noted by Madhukar Pai, director of the McGill International Tuberculosis Centre at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He predicts that future reports on 2020 and 2021 funding data will show “100 per cent covidisation” of infectious disease research funding.

“Every funder and government is now pulling money out of every other area and sinking them into COVID-19,” he tellsscidev.net。“While this might make sense in the short run, I worry that such short-term, crisis-driven funding is neither strategic nor sustainable.”

该报告中强调的一个发展是美国在疾病资助方面的全球优势下降。2014年，它在整体新兴传染病研究资金中的比例为85％，但2018年下降到68％。

Meanwhile, other countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany grew their share, as did Japan and Norway through participation in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an organisation to pool vaccine research funding established in 2016.

然而，巴恩斯利指出，美国仍然承担了新兴的传染病研究的大部分资金负担。他说：“它确实在生产这些公共物品中起着主要作用，并值得赞扬。”

But Pai is more critical, saying that recent events, such as the United States announcing its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, have left the country’s image sullied.

他说：“极端民族主义是世界现在需要的最后一件事。”“冠状病毒大流行和气候变化证明了全球健康中许多威胁无界限。”