Availability of medicines improving, but affordable pricing required: Report

Leading the Index is GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), followed by Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Merck KGaA.
Availability of medicines improving, but affordable pricing required: Report
Availability of medicines improving, but affordable pricing required: Report
Written by:

While the pharmaceutical industry has made moderate progress in its efforts to improve access to medicines including development of relevant products and waiving of patent rights in the poorest countries, it needs to concentrate on affordable pricing, the 2016 Access to Medicine Index released on Monday said. 

Stating that the industry has been "static" in some areas, the Index report states,

"For example, there has been no progress in a key measure of affordability– the proportion of products covered by pricing schemes that take into account the ability to pay. In addition, more can be done when it comes to developing access plans in the R&D stage to ensure products can be more quickly and widely deployed once they emerge from the pipeline, and in registering new products in the countries where they are most needed."

The Index assessed the extent to which a company’s access operations are needs-oriented.

Ranking the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, the report states that the industry is getting more "sophisticated" in terms of getting their products to the poor and in addressing global health priorities.

Leading the Index is GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), followed by Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Merck KGaA.

The top 20 companies have "850 products on the market for the 51 most burdensome diseases in low- and middle-income countries, and are developing another 420. This includes more than 100 products that have entered the pipeline since 2014 and 151 with low commercial incentive but which are urgently needed, mainly by the poor."

One of their findings state that heart disease, lower respiratory infections and HIV/AIDS are the diseases that are focused on, the most in company access activities.

The Access to Medicine Index analyses the top 20 research-based pharmaceutical companies with products for high-burden diseases in low- and middle-income countries. It is published every two years by the Access to Medicine Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation funded by the UK Government (UK AID), the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Read highlights of the report here.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The News Minute
www.thenewsminute.com