Three quarters of funding to find treatments for “neglected diseases” goes to just three big killers, according to a pioneering attempt to track support to health research by governments, companies and philanthropists.

HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis consume respectively 42 per cent, 18 per cent and 16 per cent of the estimated $2.6bn given for research and development in 2007, while less than 6 per cent goes to pneumonia and diarrhoeal illness, the two largest killers in the developing world.