# WHO Alignment & Disease Burden Gaps

In global health priority-setting, does Africa's clinical trial portfolio align with the WHO priority disease list and Sustainable Development Goal health targets? This alignment analysis compared condition-specific trial volumes across 23,873 African registrations on ClinicalTrials.gov to WHO essential medicines and SDG 3 priority conditions. Africa's trial portfolio was heavily skewed toward HIV (1,793 trials), malaria (531 trials), and tuberculosis (489 trials) while neglecting WHO-designated priorities including mental health (174 trials), neglected tropical diseases (12 trials), and epilepsy (73 trials). Non-communicable diseases — cardiovascular (1,426), cancer (2,182), and diabetes (760) — received research attention misaligned with their growing contribution to African mortality. Only malaria and tuberculosis research showed Africa exceeding the global average trial density. These findings demonstrate systematic misalignment between Africa's research portfolio and both WHO priorities and the epidemiological transition. Interpretation is limited by the mapping between ClinicalTrials.gov condition categories and WHO priority classifications.

## References

1. GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators. "Global burden of 369 diseases." Lancet. 2020;396:1204-1222.
2. World Health Organization. "World Health Statistics 2024." WHO, Geneva.
3. ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 Documentation. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/governance-justice/dashboards/who-alignment.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/governance-justice/code/who-alignment.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05