Shaping the Research Agenda

Despite the global efforts in research, training, and control over the years, tropical diseases remain a major cause of ill-health in poor populations. An estimated 2.7 billion people living on less than US$2 per day, in both rural and impoverished urban areas of low-income countries, are affected [1,2]. Thirteen neglected tropical diseases alone account for 534,000 deaths each year and the loss of 57 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) [3]. It has been the poverty of the affected populations that remains one of the biggest challenges to the research and development of new health products reliant largely on a market-based approach [4]. Moreover, apart from their vote at the World Health Assembly, many developing countries had little say in setting research priorities. The prevailing paradigm in research, as in development, was one of donor and recipient [5]. One of the key tenets of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR)’s strategy has been to counter this imbalance by focusing on the health priorities from a developing country’s perspective and the public health need and giving a voice to these priorities by engaging with the researchers and populations most affected [6]. In this article, we give some examples of how the TDR approach of a wide engagement of stakeholders has helped develop a more equitable research agenda that TDR has used for its own funding decisions, but even more importantly, this approach has helped shape the global research agenda on neglected infectious diseases of poverty by creating new collaborations and attracting greater research and implementation support from international funders and governments.