Research

More than two-thirds of the world’s populationlive in low-income countries,1 where health pri-orities are very different from those in more af-fluent parts of the world. Relative to people living in wealthy nations, the most impoverished 20 % of the world’s population is 9 times more likely to die of infectious dis-eases and 10 times more likely to die in childhood.2 Mea-sures of the burden of disease have been correlated with the allocation of research funds to explore whether research is being conducted in relation to need. A relation has been documented between studies funded by the National Insti-tutes of Health and the burden of disease in the United States.3 On an international level, the Global Forum for Health Research has estimated that less than 10 % of health research spending is directed toward diseases or conditions that account for 90 % of the global burden of disease, a phenomenon referred to as the “10/90 gap.”4 These num