Global spending on health research still skewed towards wealthy nations

Despite the tripling of the global spend on health research over the past decade, most research and development spending is still done by, for, and in countries with high income, a new report from the Global Forum for Health Research has found.

The world's annual spend on health research rose from $30bn (£16bn; €24bn) to almost $106bn between 1990 and 2001, says the report Monitoring Financial Flows for Health Research, published this week.

Almost half the money came from the commercial sector, but the public sector contributed 44%, a sizeable chunk of which comes from …