Malaria research : an audit of international activity / J. Anderson, M. MacLean and C. Davies.

  • Anderson, J.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Malaria research : an audit of international activity / J. Anderson, M. MacLean and C. Davies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MAIN FINDINGS Funding Total identifiable global expenditure on malaria research in 1993 was approximately US$84 million. Over half the total came from the USA (especially the US Agency for International Development, USAID, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID). Much of the remainder came from Europe (notably the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, MRC, in the UK), or from the Programme in Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) which is cosponsored by the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as several governments, espe- cially in Scandinavia. Funding has declined in some organizations over the past decade, most notably in USAID. However, there have been increases elsewhere, especially at the Wellcome Trust, NIAID and the US Department or Defense (DoD). Support went mainly to researchers in Europe and the USA. The exceptions were to be found in the funding initiatives of the TDR pro- gramme, the Wellcome Trust, the UK MRC, the European Union (EU) and USAID, which encouraged international cooperation. Notable among these were the overseas units supported in malaria-endemic countries by the Wellcome Trust and the UK MRC. The overall conclusion to be drawn is that global investment in research is very low compared with other disease areas over the past 10 years, and appears to be declining further. Expressed as investment in research per death, malaria research (at approximately US$42 per fatal case) receives markedly less funding than other dis- eases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS or asthma. Research outputs International publishing activity largely reflected the pattern of funding and was very low compared with other biomedical fields. The USA is currently the largest single con- tributor to the malaria research literature (34 per cent of the global total in 1994), but its world share of publications has been declining over the past 10 years (from 42 per cent in 1984). Meanwhile, the trend from the UK is up, from 14 per cent of the world total in 1984 to 18 per cent in 1994. The world share of malaria publications from France, Australia and Thailand also increased. UK centres for collaborative research located in malaria-endemic countries appeared to fos- ter international coauthorship. A total of 38 per cent of UK output was internationally coauthored and largely reflected the work at the overseas units of the Wellcome Trust and UK MRC. Citations to papers supported by the six fund- ing bodies contributing most to malaria research were more numerous than citations to papers supported by other organizations. In 1989, the most recent year for which citation analysis was conducted, NIAID and the UK MRC appeared to have the greatest citation impact. For five organizations, the production of high-citation-impact papers remained more or less stable over time. These were the NIAID, the US DoD, TDR, the Wellcome Trust and the UK MRC. For one funding body (USAID), there was an apparent decline in its proportion of high-impact papers over time. Activity in different subfields of malaria research The field of malaria research was divided into 14 subfields, and research publications were assigned to each of these. 'Clinical' research papers accounted lor 42 per cent of the world total, describing studies of malaria in humans ranging from clinical management and patho- physiology to human immune response and genetic susceptibility. 'Non-clinical' papers accounted for 58 per cent of the world total, describing studies of malaria in animal models or in vitro and basic studies on mosquito vectors.
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