what is the validity of claim that 10 percent resources are spent to 90 % of the problems of poor people, who did this survey and what is the authenticity of these figures!
most of the world poors live in countires where no honest statistics is ever produced!

I would like the author of the aforementioned comment to visit the Global Health Forum's Website. The entire book and the latest reports are freely available online.

"The 10/90 Report on Health Research 2003-2004 was published on 10 May 2004, as a printed volume and on CD-ROM.

The Report covers progress in helping correct the 10/90 gap in health research over the past two years. It was prepared by the Secretariat of the Global Forum for Health Research on the basis of presentations and discussions at Forum 7, held in December 2003 in Geneva, as well as those at Forum 6, held in October 2002 in Arusha, Tanzania, and on the basis of the work of the Global Forum and its partners during 2003 and 2004.

The 10/90 Report is addressed to all those who can help change, in whatever way, the imbalance in the allocation of health research funding: those who fund research, those who set priorities, those who influence decision-making, those who provide information and evidence."

The 10/90 gap now:

" In 1990, the Commission on Health Research for Development estimated that less than 10% of the global health research resources (totalling US$30 billion/year in 1986) were being applied to the health problems of developing countries, which accounted for over 90% of the world’s health problems – an imbalance subsequently captured in the term the ‘10/90 gap’.

In 1996, the WHO Ad Hoc Committee on Health Research Relating to Future Intervention Options estimated that US$55.8 billion was expended globally on health research in 1992 but noted that the ‘10/90 gap’ persisted.

The world now spends considerably more on health research: our latest estimate puts the figure at US$105.9 billion for 2001, of which 44% by the public sector, 48% by the private for-profit sector and 8% by the private not-for-profit sector.

Despite these positive increases, there is still a massive under-investment in health research relevant to the needs of low-and middle-income countries – the imbalance of the ‘10/90 gap’. We need more research to address the lack of appropriate drugs and technologies to treat the multiple burdens of communicable and chronic diseases that many developing countries now face and we need more research to provide knowledge and evidence about what policies, systems and services work in different places and settings, about what is failing and about what is needed to improve them."

Link:
http://www.globalforumhealth.org/
Global Forum for Health Research
--Pashtoon
<mailto:pashtoon.kasi@gmail.com>