Every day, more than 35,000 people die of diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and 17 other neglected tropical diseases registered by the World Health Organization (WHO). Tuberculosis and malaria alone kill approximately 3 million people every year. People living in developing countries are particularly affected by these poverty-related and neglected diseases. Millions of people in these countries have no access to the medical achievements made in the fields of diagnostics, prevention and treatment, for example the latest vaccines. There is a close correlation between health and development, which is why these diseases further aggravate the distress of the poorest part of the world's population.

At present, only a small part of funding for health research and development is used to develop new and adapted technologies to combat diseases in developing countries. The available resources are insufficient to develop the new diagnosis and prevention methods and medication such as microbicides and vaccines so urgently needed to combat these diseases. There is mostly no economic incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop products which are specifically targeted at the needs of poor countries. Public funding is also often provided for research into diseases which affect rich countries. This is confirmed by the following figures: of the 1,556 new active substances developed between 1975 and 2004, only 21 are relevant for neglected tropical diseases including malaria and tuberculosis. Health experts of the Global Forum for Health Research call this the "10 to 90 gap": only 10 per cent of global resources for health research are used for diseases affecting 90 per cent of the world's population.

With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the United Nations have called for immediate action against neglected poverty diseases - not only to improve people's quality of life, but also to fight poverty and trigger economic growth.