Drug companies are getting moderately better at enabling access to drugs for people in low- and middle-income countries shows a recent report from the non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation.
GlaxoSmithKline topped the biennial ranking, for the 5th consecutive time, followed by Johnson & Johnson and Novartis.
Companies are also doing a better job of addressing global health priorities, says the report. The top 20 pharmaceutical companies are developing 420 products for the most burdensome diseases of low- and middle-income countries, up by more than 100 products since the 2014 Index. “We see evidence that collaborative R&D models are engaging the industry in developing urgently needed medicines they would not otherwise be considering because there is not enough of a commercial market for them,” said Jayasree Iyer, Executive Director of the Access to Medicine Foundation.
The report also found that good practice is limited to a narrow range of products and countries, providing plenty of room for improvement.
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Mullard, A. Access to medicines report cards. Nat Rev Drug Discov 15, 811 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2016.260
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2016.260