There are many diseases that aren’t properly treated because of lack of incentive to innovate, causing millions of deaths.

Ideally, the interfaces between the various processes are well resourced and managed to ensure continuous availability of health products. Unfortunately, product research and development (R&D) and access is skewed in favour of ailments that are commercially attractive, while those diseases that disproportionately affect poor populations in developing countries are neglected. Consequently, an estimated 1 billion people, one in six of the world's population, currently suffer from neglected tropical diseases, mostly in developing countries . The afflicted populations are poor and commercial incentives to enable investment in the risky product R&D are weak ,. The few available drugs have problems related to their cost, safety, stability, and increasingly, the threat of resistance that may limit their utility.

Some of the neglected diseases include malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, filariasis, and onchocerciasis. Malaria is a major health problem with over 1 million deaths occurring mainly in children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa ,. New and affordable antimalarial drugs that are effective against resistant parasites and can be safely administered to children and pregnant women are urgently needed ,. Even for malaria, which has probably had significant investment, the drugs expected from the existing R&D portfolio in the next few years are a combination of old drugs that are mostly reliant on artemisinins. Going by the industrial assessment of attrition, the number of projects in the pre-clinical phase of R&D is too small to guarantee success. Recent reports of artemisinin resistance in Asia  means that emphasis has to be placed on the discovery of novel entities to support the medium to long-term needs of malaria control as well as possible elimination and eradication. The ongoing discussion on malaria eradication requires major technical and financial investment today to support the discovery and development of the tools needed for eradication beyond the next 15 years.