India’s health research is not aligned with its disease burden | Data Premium

India's health research misaligned with disease burden: Study shows mismatch between research publications & DALYs. It is channelling significant research efforts into diseases that have a lesser immediate impact domestically but pose a considerable global threat

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the significance of tailoring health research to the specific needs of individual countries. However, India’s investment in healthcare research is limited, with a misalignment between funded research areas and health challenges.

Disease burden, a composite metric of mortality and morbidity, represented through Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) by the World Health Organization, is a measure of a population’s health. A recent collaborative study by the IISc in Bangalore and the Leiden University in The Netherlands shows a mismatch between India’s health-related research publications and DALYs.

Chart 1 | The chart shows India’s relative disease burden — a disease’s share in total DALYs between 2000 and 2019 — against the disease’s share in health research publications in the same period. 

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Only diseases with a relatively high burden in India are plotted. Misalignments can be observed in Chart 1 with some diseases cornering a high share of health research publications, disproportionate to their burden. For instance, the share of Diabetes Mellitus in total DALYs was 3.1%, but its share in publications was 7.5%. On the other hand, the share of Neonatal conditions in the DALY was 12.3%, but its share in publications was only 1.3%.

Chart 2A | The chart plots the relative disease burden against research efforts for neonatal conditions for the world (W), high-income countries (HIC), upper-middle income countries (UMIC), India (IN) and lower income countries (LIC).

While the research share remains the same across regions, the burden is much higher in India and low-income countries.