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New effort ranks drugmakers by impact

The idea is to give companies another incentive to treat infectious diseases.

Pharmaceutical companies have one very obvious reason to avoid developing drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis: There’s basically no money in it.

That’s because most people with those conditions are poor and have little means to pay. So what kind of incentive do you need to get drugmakers to take on global health epidemics? The answer may be a new index that ranks companies by who has the most effective drugs.

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