prevention. • A better understanding of relationships between infectious agents and some chronic diseases will lead to new strategies for preventing and treating chronic diseases. • New strategies will be designed to reduce insect vector populations and control animal populations that serve as reservoirs for human diseases. • Diagnostic and reference reagents will be available for use by public health laboratories. CDC will have enhanced capacity to serve as the national reference center for diagnosis of infectious diseases and for drug-resistance testing. • The next generation of epidemiologists and laboratorians will be trained and prepared to respond to emerging infectious disease threats. • Implementation of prevention guidelines will result in decreased death and disability caused by nosocomial infections, opportunistic infections, antimicrobial resistance, and infections in newborns. • Cooperative efforts among managed care organizations, health-care facilities, state and local health departments, and CDC will improve treatment and prevention of infectious diseases. • Deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases will be substantially reduced in the United States and abroad. • Community-based demonstration programs will help identify cost-effective approaches to addressing emerging infectious disease problems. 12 MMWR September 11, 1998 References 1. Institute of Medicine. Emerging infections: microbial threats to health in the United States. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1992. 2. Farnham PG. Defining and measuring the costs of the HIV epidemic to business firms. Public Health Rep 1994;109:311–8. 3. Brown RE, Miller B, Taylor WR, et al. Health-care expenditures for tuberculosis in the United States. Arch Intern Med 1995;155:1595–1600. 4. Martone WJ, Jarvis WR, Culver DH, Haley RW. Incidence and nature of endemic and epidemic nosocomial infections. In Bennett JV, Brachman PS, eds. Hospital infections. Third edition. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1992. 5. Buzby JC, Roberts T, Lin C-TJ, MacDonald JM. Bacterial foodborne disease: medical costs and productivity losses. Agricultural economic report No. 741. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Economics Division, Economic Research Service, 1996. 6. Schiffman MH, Brinton LA, Devesa SS, Fraumeni JF Jr. Cervical c Infectious diseases remain major causes of ill health among poor people. Almost 3 billion people live on less than US$ 2 a day, and they continue to be at the greatest risk for these diseases. How can this be possible when global health funding is increasing and new drugs and other health tools are being developed? How is research being prioritized to meet these needs, and can it be done better? The Global Report is an important tool in raising these questions and providing some ideas. Its value is in its cross-disciplinary perspective, bringing together issues from environmental changes, lack of innovation support in low and middle income countries, poor health systems and inequitable funding patterns. While the report focuses on infectious diseases of poverty, many of the issues raised are also relevant for other communicable and non-communicable diseases. It is essential reading for policy-makers, funders and research leaders. TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, which initiated this independent report and brought together worldwide experts to author it, is one of two Special Programmes based at and executed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The Global Report provides valuable contributions to meet the goals of WHO’s Research for Health Strategy, which was adopted at the 63rd World Health Assembly in 2010. National, regional and international stakeholders were invited by TDR to come together to identify research priorities so that they can own these priorities and take them forward. My hope is that the discussions generated from this report will help make important changes, so that we break the terrible cycle of poverty and disease and start to experience the real power of research to improve lives. Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General of Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research, World Health Organization (WHO) Intorduction Global Report for Research on Infectious Diseases of Poverty 2 How the report was developed The world’s poor are still not reaping the full benefits of research outcomes, despite an increasing global commitment to health research. While research funding to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB has increased, other infectious diseases associated with poverty, such as Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis and Buruli ulcer, have not had the same attention. This key fact is at the heart of this report, which began after TDR initiated a concerted Stewardship effort to investigate and support more equitable approaches to funding and support for research. Supported by the European Commission, TDR set up a global “Think Tank” of over 130 experts in 2008, and from the outset, the concept was to ensure disease endemic country input, with these countries playing active roles in developing the research agenda on infectious diseases of poverty. Experts were convened from