Bertram Online points to an interesting interview with Victoria Hale, who helps run a non-profit drugs company:
When I was with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) I learned about ?orphan? diseases, defined as diseases that fewer than 200,000 people in the US suffer from. I thought it strange that outside the US, some of these diseases are enormous. For instance, there are about 1000 cases of malaria in the US, and 500 or 600 million cases worldwide. You need to take your American eyeglasses off and consider the whole world. I wanted to do something about the fact that these were not orphan diseases at all ? these were devastating diseases that had an impact on the economies of entire regions, and on political stability.