February Global Health Grand Rounds: 'The Health Impact Fund: Enhancing Justice and Efficiency in Global Health'

Dr. Thomas Pogge (left) with Dr. Carl Nathan, the chairman of the department of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell.

Dr. Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, delivered the February Global Health Grand Rounds. His lecture, entitled "The Health Impact Fund: Increasing Enhancing Justice and Efficiency in Global Health", described a novel method of incentivizing drug development for the poor. Dr. Pogge is the founder of the Health Impact Fund (HIF), a proposed intergovernmental fund for drug discovery designed to reward innovators according to measurable health impact. By registering a patented medicine with the HIF, a company would sell it globally at the lowest feasible cost. In exchange, the company would receive payments in proportion to the product’s measured global health impact. Dr. Pogge described that the HIF system would be most attractive for drugs and vaccines targeted primarily at the poor, as those products are likely to have a large health impact but low profitability under the current system. In entertaining questions from the audience, Dr. Pogge noted that there is a lot to study before the HIF is ready for full implementation. However, he and his colleagues are looking to start a pilot project with one drug in one country, which will help test how pharmaceutical companies will respond to a pay-for-performance mechanism. Dr. Pogge provided a fascinating new perspective to the issue of access to drugs for the poor.