Funding for Chagas Disease: A 10-Year (2009-2018) Survey

Abstract

Chagas disease was discovered in 1909 by the Brazilian scientist Carlos Chagas. After more than 110 years, many outcomes have been achieved in all research fields; however, Chagas disease remains a serious public health problem, mainly in Latin America, being one of the most neglected tropical diseases in the world. As a neglected disease, it receives very little financial support. Nevertheless, how much is actually spent? With this question in mind, the goal of the present work was to summarize all funding employed by multiple institutions in the Chagas disease field in a 10-year survey. From 2009 to 2018, Chagas disease received only USD 236.31 million, representing 0.67% of the total applied for all neglected diseases in this period. Mostly, the investments are concentrated in basic research (47%) and drug development (42.5%), with the public sector responsible for 74% of all funding, followed by the industry (19%) and philanthropy (7%). Relevantly, NIH (USA) alone accounted for more than half of the total investment. Taking into account that Chagas disease has a great socio-economic impact, it is clear that more investments are needed, especially from endemic countries. Furthermore, coordinated strategies to make better use of resources and incentives for the pharmaceutical industry must be adopted.

Keywords: Chagas disease; annual funding; global financing; human illness; investments; neglected tropical disease.

Figure 1

Global distribution showing the countries endemic for Chagas disease, where transmission occurs mainly through insect vector action, as well as the countries that receive infected people from these regions due to the migratory process [3,10,11].

Figure 2

(A) Funds invested in Chagas disease for 10 years by the three main investment sectors. (B) Funds from the three main investment sectors distributed by product each type [20]. The values are adjusted for 2018 inflation and are expressed in US million dollars.

Figure 3

(A) Funds for Chagas disease from the main geographic regions. (B) Fractioned funds by each country. The colors are correlated with each geographic region in (B). The data in (A) and (B) refer to investments coming from the public sector and philanthropic organizations in each region, thus excluding the private sector, which has headquarters in different countries. The values are adjusted for 2018 inflation and are expressed in USD in million. Note that the countries are grouped by their geographic regions and not by the origin of the spoken language (like the Latin American countries); in this way, Mexico is found in North America [20].