Pharmaceutical Companies Helping Poor Countries: The Forgotten Benefit of Innovation

Recent settlements, hearings, legal cases and congressional investigations have overshadowed one of the most important roles pharmaceutical companies play in the world: making their products available to the world’s poor.

This week, rankings from the Access to Medicine Index showed that “GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Novartis have taken the top three spots again, according to the New York Times. The rankings, which were created in 2008, “ranks pharmaceutical companies on how readily they make their products available to the worlds poor.” The index, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Dutch and British governments, Oxfam and other donors, also issued detailed “report cards” on 20 companies.

The methodology used to rank companies takes into account many factors, such as “whether they offer lower prices or donate drugs in poor countries, whether they license generic versions of their products or fight to prevent them, whether they donate expertise or money to struggling health systems and whether they do research on neglected diseases.”

It was noted that in this year’s reporting, “95 percent of the brand-name companies approached by the Dutch foundation that started the index agreed to provide information, when only two years ago, only about half did.”

Results of the Index also showed that “European companies slightly edged out American companies in the rankings, while the four Japanese companies ranked were at or near the bottom.” In addition, generic drug makers were ranked separately for the first time, with three Indian companies, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Cipla and Dr. Reddy’s, were listed.

Twice each year Tom Stossel, MD travels to Zambia, three weeks at a time in an effort to help bring dental and medical care to the local community.  It is clear from those trips that it is the utter lack of resources that are the primary hindrances to patient care.  They laugh when he describes the worries that some American’s have over working with industry.    

As the mission of the organization states, “together with pharmaceuticals, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders we can combine the goals of science and business to create a new vision for improving access to medicine, redefining the role and reach of pharmaceuticals to save millions of lives each year.” Consequently, the 2010 results show that many companies have met this mission, and are now far exceeding expectations.