One of the world’s leading pharmaceuticals companies has significantly extended its commitment to provide cheap drugs to developing nations.
GlaxoSmithKline has said it will now provide ‘preferential pricing offers’ on all its HIV and Aids drugs to the 63 countries designated by the United Nations as ‘least developed nations’ and to all countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Until now it has done so only on certain drugs, such as Retrovir, and in certain African countries.
GSK will also, for the first time, offer discounts on all its anti-malarial medicines to the least developed nations, and says it will additionally review its policies on offering other cheap drugs to the same countries.
The UK-based company plans to pilot distribution projects with these drugs in five African countries, which have not yet been named. ‘A key consideration in offering preferential prices for these products is that we do not want to distort national treatment priorities at a time when vaccination and the control of Aids, malaria and tuberculosis are public health priorities,’ it said.
GSK has also set up a corporate social responsibility committee, chaired by its non-executive chairman Sir Richard Sykes, to advise the board ‘on issues of significance in the relationship between the company and society’ and keep the company’s policy on health care in the developing world ‘under review’.
GSK said the moves were part of its attempt to take a ‘leadership role’ in increasing access to medicines in developing countries.
‘The industry can play an important role, but it does not have the mandate, expertise or resources to deliver health care unilaterally to developing countries,’ it said.
GSK’s plans have been outlined in a new report, Facing the challenge, which details the findings of an internal policy review commissioned earlier this year.
Oxfam, which launched its ‘Cut the cost’ campaign in the spring to put pressure on the industry over pricing and patents, welcomed GSK’s decision as ‘unprecedented in the number of products and countries involved’. Oxfam policy adviser Sophia Tickell said it was ‘all we could reasonably expect an individual company to do’.
Another company, Pfizer, has decided to offer one of its drugs, Diflucan, free to people with HIV and Aids in around 50 of the countries worst hit by Aids.
Henry McKinnell, Pfizer’s chief executive, said the company would support the initiative ‘for as long as it is needed’, and that Pfizer’s support had ‘no dollar or time limits’.
Winterthur Insurance has become the first company to donate money to the United Nations’ Global Aids and Health Fund. The company, which is part of the Credit Suisse group, has given $1million to the fund, which has been set up to allow the private sector to channel money into efforts to tackle Aids. UK-based aid agency Christian Aid criticized plans for the fund and said it ‘risked becoming a subsidy for pharmaceutical companies’.