The Bulletin of the World Health Organization is an international journal of public health with a special focus on developing countries. Since it was first published in 1948 the Bulletin has become one of the world's leading public health journals. As the flagship periodical of the World Health Organization (WHO) the Bulletin draws on WHO experts as editorial advisers reviewers and authors as well as on external collaborators. In this month's issue: Legalization as an institutional choice in the context of research and development; Towards a new model for pharmaceutical research; Balancing options for health research and development; Putting health policy and systems research on the map; Performance of case definitions used for influenza surveillance among hospitalized patients in a rural area of India; Economic evaluation of a task-shifting intervention for common mental disorders in India; Parental perceptions surrounding polio and self-reported non-participation in polio supplementary immunization activities in Karachi Pakistan; Understanding the modes of transmission model of new HIV infection and its use in prevention planning; Arsenic in tube well water in Bangladesh: health and economic impacts and implications for arsenic mitigation; Use of evidence to support healthy public policy: a policy effectiveness-feasibility loop; Assessing implementation mechanisms for an international agreement on research and development for health products; Decision-making on malaria vaccine introduction: the role of cost-effectiveness analyses; Anything goes on the path to universal health coverage? No.