In reading the Wall Street Journal recently, I noticed an article: New Malaria Drug Candidate Holds Promise. I stepped back for a moment and thought, "oh, malaria, that thing I took those pills for when I backpacked around South America." Then I thought, "funny, you don't hear much about malaria drug development, distribution, or investment." It is especially stark when you contrast the press malaria gets to the press AIDS get. We hear about AIDS constantly, from Team America, Movie Stars, the Associated Press, Playboy Bunnies, and everywhere else. In fact, a quick Google Traffic Estimate shows 4,090,000 searches globally for "AIDS" but only 823,000 for the word "malaria."

(Emma Holister)

There are four vital differences between AIDS and malaria. 1.AIDS affects rich, white people that have money to pay for the treatments and malaria, by in large, does not. This not only means the private sector has a significant incentive to develop drugs for AIDS treatments (and disincentive on malaria drugs), but the rich governments have a incentive to subsidize the AIDS R&D as well.

2. Coinciding with the prior difference, holding an AIDS fundraiser is a cool, sexy (ironically), cause that stars have embraced - just look at Rent. Malaria is not (ewww mosquitoes).

3.The roadblock to finding a cure for AIDS is still the science - it is hard and there is a lot we do not know. Relatively effective treatments for malaria currently do exist, the scientific puzzle to finding even more effective treatments is comparatively easy to AIDS, and the biggest issue is distribution and resources to get these drugs to the people that need them.

4.Approximately 2.0 million people a year die from AIDS and approximately 863,000 people a year die from Malaria.

From a cursory examination of the facts, one would think that since malaria kills about 43% of the people AIDS does, an equivalent 43% of the funding that goes towards AIDS drug research, treatment, and prevention should go towards malaria drug research, treatment, and prevention. However, the global budgets tell a different story. For malaria drug prevention and treatment, the global budget is approximately $1.5 billion, which is a threefold increase from 2004. Additionally, investment in worldwide malaria research is approximately $375 million per year - or one-fourth the total expenditure on Viagra in the developed world.

In contrast, the US Government's Budget for Domestic Prevention, Research, and Treatment of HIV/AIDS was $10.8 billion in 2000 and this number triples when private expenditures are added. In 2008 it is estimated that $15.6 billion was available for HIV prevention and treatment globally - with the private pharmaceutical industry also spending untold hundreds of millions, it not billions, more on research and development.

While these numbers would not pass muster for a peer reviewed scientific journal, they do show a stark, order of magnitude, disparity in spending on two of the world's mostly deadly diseases based on the socio-economic lines of those affected. This can be seen in the fact that in 1996 (and these ratios remain relatively consistent) 1,167 new anti-infective drugs were in R&D while only 48 anti-parasites were - with anti-parasites being the therapeutic class with the least number of compounds in development.

It is great to see a feel good article in the Wall Street Journal about a new, promising malaria drug candidate that will be effective against increasingly drug resistant strains of the parasite. However, although resistance is a growing issue, it is nowhere near the current limiting factor in treating malaria. Unless developed nations are willing to pony up even a small additional percentage of the funds for malaria that they do for AIDS - especially when considering the anemic private funding malaria receives, the real impact of this new drug will be negligible at best. And the tragedy is that malaria is something we currently know how to treat with a very high success rate and for a comparatively cheap price relative to AIDS. 

Reach Staff Reporter Aaron Perman here.