Essential National Health Research — A Key to Equity in Development

The Commission on Health Research for Development, an independent international initiative, was launched in 1987 to study the status, effect, and needs of research on the health problems of developing countries. The commission has now released its final report, Health Research: Essential Link to Equity in Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).Among the commission's key findings is the fact that although the problems of developing countries are the focus of only 5 percent of the world's expenditure on health research, those countries suffer 93 percent of the burden of premature mortality, as measured in potential years of life . . .