Pharmaceutical Research on Tropical Diseases

Why is there so little research on diseases that are endemic in developing countries?
What can be done to promote this research? What are the arguments for promoting
this research? Who should be involved in this promotion? Your audience is a director in
the World Bank’s Global Health Division. She is an epidemiologist by training and thus
already knows a lot about the incidence of tropical disease; but she is less familiar with
how pharmaceutical markets work.
Your response should be a 1-page policy memo (in 12pt font, single-spaced). The title
of the policy brief should clearly convey the main point of the brief. I encourage you to
use sub-headings and to organize your paragraphs and sentences carefully. You may also
use bullet points, boxes, columns, bold, or italics. Please use a standard referencing style.
References can go on a second page, but any figures or tables need to be on the first page.
Do not include appendices.
I will distribute a grading rubric and a separate document with general advice for writing
policy briefs. Read these closely; a policy brief is not an essay, a short story nor an opinion
piece. Your goal is to give clear, reasonable and complete advice to a policy-maker who
needs to make a decision on this issue.
The following reading list will get you started. You should do some of your own research as well. You may
focus on a specific under-researched disease that is endemic to
developing countries, or write on a more general topic.