Corporate efforts to expand access to medicine stumble

The article begins by spotlighting Novartis's ascent to the top position in the newly released 2024 Access to Medicine Index, overtaking GSK, which had long held the leading spot. Despite this shift, the article underscores a persistent issue highlighted in the 2024 Index: although some modest progress has been made, the potential for improving access is still far from realised, and the pace of change is slow.

 “More companies have announced business models to expand the reach of their medicine to more people in the poorest countries,” the article quotes Jayasree Iyer, CEO of the Foundation. “But we’d expect the progress to be much greater at this point.”

The article also covers a Key Finding of the 2024 Index, which examines the limited number of voluntary licenses granted by pharmaceutical companies to generic manufacturers during the analysis period. It emphasises the critical role of voluntary licenses in significantly reducing drug prices, making essential medicines more accessible. However, it also highlights resistance from many pharmaceutical companies, who argue that such licenses jeopardize their ability to maintain price premiums.

The article highlights another issue reflected in the 2024 Index: Companies are increasingly shifting away from addressing priority R&D gaps for diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis, which pose a disproportionate disease burden in LMICs. This is reflected by a shrinking priority pipeline, the 20 companies included in the Index added only 93 research and development projects targeting these diseases, a sharp drop compared to from the 151 projects reported in the previous Index.

“If companies don’t plan early, they will really struggle to make their drugs available,” the article is quotes Jayasree saying: “They will end up investing a lot of money later on.”