This is a cool idea, I upvoted (from −1 to 0). I’d really like to see more detailed analysis and well-documented sources to answer this question. I couldn’t really tell from the post whether the numbers were about right or not.
I worked on a report with others at Longview. We calculated that severely reducing the burden of HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis would be around $219 billion. Essentially, we adjusted numbers from a variety of reports from e.g. the WHO to estimate these numbers (possibly some of the same sources, it’s hard to tell). This is already quite a bit more than the $10 billion estimate you have. I think the main difference is due to adjusting for inflation and in-kind medicine donations.
However, this wouldn’t allow us to eradicate these diseases in all likelihood. In fact, the target for Tuberculosis was to reduce deaths by about 90%. It is plausible that the last 10% is actually much more expensive to target, because the low hanging fruit has been picked, so to speak. (I’m not an expert in this area, and this could be completely wrong).
This makes me think that the cost of eliminating these diseases is likely well over $100 billion each.
(We also estimated the costs of severely reducing the burden of disease from neglected tropical diseases, and that was lower per disease.)
Hey Riley. I think the 10 billion is on average “per disease”, in the post they listed 100 billion as the number for malaria which is in the ballpark of your estimates.
This is a cool idea, I upvoted (from −1 to 0). I’d really like to see more detailed analysis and well-documented sources to answer this question. I couldn’t really tell from the post whether the numbers were about right or not.
I worked on a report with others at Longview. We calculated that severely reducing the burden of HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis would be around $219 billion. Essentially, we adjusted numbers from a variety of reports from e.g. the WHO to estimate these numbers (possibly some of the same sources, it’s hard to tell). This is already quite a bit more than the $10 billion estimate you have. I think the main difference is due to adjusting for inflation and in-kind medicine donations.
However, this wouldn’t allow us to eradicate these diseases in all likelihood. In fact, the target for Tuberculosis was to reduce deaths by about 90%. It is plausible that the last 10% is actually much more expensive to target, because the low hanging fruit has been picked, so to speak. (I’m not an expert in this area, and this could be completely wrong).
This makes me think that the cost of eliminating these diseases is likely well over $100 billion each.
(We also estimated the costs of severely reducing the burden of disease from neglected tropical diseases, and that was lower per disease.)
Hey Riley. I think the 10 billion is on average “per disease”, in the post they listed 100 billion as the number for malaria which is in the ballpark of your estimates.