How do sponsors know that the vaccine would not have been developed anyway?
As is often the case with public policy, it is hard to know what would happen otherwise. However, we can see at present that the level of investment in these diseases is very low — a tiny proportion of global health R&D — and both theory and evidence tell us that increasing the size of the prospective market increases the amount of R&D. Moreover, even if the effect of the commitment were very modest — for example, if it only accelerates the development and use of a vaccine by just a few years — our calculations show the commitment is still very cost effective.
