With most of the world’s *children* eagerly awaiting their holiday gifts, a surprise has come early to the global health policy community in the form of a draft report from the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Working Group (EWG) on R&D Financing for Global Health. Thank you, Wikileaks.

The EWG was tasked by the WHO to evaluate proposals for “new and innovative sources of funding to stimulate research and development” considering “the specific research needs of developing countries.” In other words, what is the best way to raise money for global health R&D and what is the best way to spend that money? A number of global health NGOs, countries, and biopharmaceutical companies put forth proposals for new funding or incentive mechanisms, and the draft report rates these suggestions and offers an overall analysis on the topic.

I’ll start by listing the two things that made me most happy about the report.

First, the report highlighted more than ten promising categories of proposals, divided into three groups: Fundraising, Fund Allocating, and Efficiencies. Within each category, there were often a number of proposals weighed against each other. For example, in the “PDP-linked funding” category, the EWG evaluated four different proposals that potentially could be used to raise funds to divvy up between PDPs and projects. Furthermore, their findings are presented as general recommendations and it is clear that more thought and evaluation will be required. While it’s tempting to want easy answers, this topic requires careful analysis, and the EWG does not seem to be making premature recommendations based on this draft.

Secondly, although “global health” can often imply a few niche areas—infectious diseases or maternal and child health, for example—the reality is that poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America suffer from many, many other illnesses, most of which are common in high-income countries as well. These include cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes. The EWG draft paid ample attention to these concerns. It’s true that we have ways to manage diabetes in the United States—it’s not necessarily true that we have the right systems to manage diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa. This is worth noting, and the EWG did.

What the report did lay out was how much work still needs to be done—in terms of money raised and scientific research completed—in order to make sure that we are meeting the needs of poor patients. Because the best present of all would be having the drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines necessary to treat, prevent, and diagnose all classes of diseases in all corners of the world.

Happy holidays.

Thayer Hardwick is a research analyst at BIO Ventures for Global Health