G-FINDER 2023 Sexual & Reproductive Health Research & Development report: Beyond Spillovers

Funding for the range of sexual and reproductive health issues included in this report has grown by nearly $200m since we began collecting data in 2018, an increase of nearly 50%. But this growth has not been distributed equally.

Most growth was seen in R&D for sexually transmitted infections or issues related to them. Human papillomavirus and HPV-related cervical cancer, gonorrhoea and HSV-2 accounted for 94% of the net growth in issue-specific SRH funding between 2018-2021.

In stark contrast, funding for the maternal health issues included in the report — postpartum haemorrhage and preeclampsia & eclampsia — fell by a combined $3.7m, together receiving just $22m in 2021. This is a drop of nearly 15% from budgets which were already dangerously light even in 2018.

One reason why funding for maternal health R&D is much lower than for other issues is likely due to the different reasons why funders support SRH R&D. Many SRH issues have a ‘dual market’, with new technologies needed and potentially useful in both high-income and low- and middle-income countries. Typically, not much mystery surrounds which side of the dual market product developers are most interested in: funding is far more likely to focus on tapping high-income country commercial potential, by addressing high-income country problems. Comparing the R&D needs and burden of maternal versus non-maternal SRH issues thus partly explains the gap in funding between them.