Staying Relevant

From the SF Chronicle article How to create a market for vaccines by Tom Kalil & Bruce Mehlman:

"Every year, more than 6 million people die from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria alone. Today, there are no effective vaccines for these and many other diseases of the poor. That's because low-income countries have average health budgets of $17 to $36 per person, and can only afford to spend pennies per dose on vaccines. As a result, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have little incentive to develop these life-saving vaccines. In fact, only 10 percent of the world's health research and development is devoted to diseases that afflict 90 percent of the world's population."

Yes, I ripped this from BoingBoing, but I have a slightly more skeptical take on the article by Tom Kalil & Bruce Mehlman. First of all, let me say that both Kalil and Mehlman are brilliant people and their proposal is an innovative one that goes right to the policy level and may have a chance of actually working.

However, I do have a few questions:

1) Who is going to make the massive initial investment?
2) Can this long-term investment be politically palatable to politicians who are interested in short-term results?
3) If the project is funded, how do you deliver vaccines to people in need? For example, free US food aid is being sold at a premium on the Palestinian streets, or perhaps widespread corruption ala Oil for Food.
4) What is the incentive for countries to not treat this program as a crutch or handout?

This market-centered idea is a good one, especially with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's incredible amount of funding to create these markets (HINT, HINT!). Kalil & Mehlman's plan has a real chance of saving millions of lives, but there still needs the creative community's involvement. Creative types need to help in building public and political support, developing people-centered methods of delivery for vaccines, increasing education and awareness about health among poor communities, and empowering people to change their living situations through communication & design.

Tom Kalil, Bruce Mehlman, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bruce Mau, Designers Without Borders - have your people call their people...please.