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Developing countries

We have learnt from decades working in the front line of the fight against disease across the world that there are no easy solutions to the challenge of providing access to sustainable healthcare in developing countries.

Poverty is the single biggest barrier to improving healthcare in the developing world. In many countries people do not have enough food or access to a clean water supply, no hospital or clinic in which to receive treatment and no healthcare professionals to care for them.

Often the governments of these countries simply do not have the resources needed to address the healthcare needs of their people.

The World Bank estimates that an annual healthcare spend of $14 per person is the minimum needed to provide the most fundamental services. Yet the average spend in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is currently only $6.

Significant additional funding from new national and international sources must be mobilised, therefore, to really make a difference.

Only a holistic approach to prevention and treatment will work - one in which medicines play a supporting role in a comprehensive programme of prevention, health education, screening diagnosis and treatment, community care and support.

We believe that tackling the problem is a shared responsibility, involving the country concerned, international governments, non-government organisations, the private sector and affected communities.

We are committed to playing a full part by taking an innovative, responsible and, above all, sustainable approach to meeting the healthcare challenges of the developing world. While we don't have the mandate, expertise or resources to deliver healthcare unilaterally, there are four key areas in which we believe we can contribute, in order to achieve real and sustainable results; through developing the medicines and vaccines that are so urgently needed, and make them available through partnerships and at preferential prices:

• Continuing our investment in the research and development of diseases that affect the developing world in particular.
• Offering sustainable preferential pricing arrangements in Least Developed Countries and sub-Saharan Africa for currently available medicines that are needed most.
• Taking a leading role in community activities that promote effective healthcare.
• Seeking innovative partnerships and solutions, such as through voluntary licensing.

We strongly believe we are making an important contribution to the improvement of healthcare in the developing world. We will continue with these and other efforts, focusing on areas where we can make the most difference and helping to find imaginative ways of making our medicines available and accessible to developing countries, as part of a more holistic approach to care.

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