GSK promises to cap price of its drugs in poorest countries
GlaxoSmithKline has unveiled a series of policies to boost access to its drugs in poorer and richer countries alike (www.gsk.com/media/Witty-Harvard-Speech-Summary.pdf). In a speech at Harvard Medical School last week, Andrew Witty laid out his approach for the first time since taking over as the company’s chief executive last spring, saying: “Society expects us to do more . . . To be frank, I agree. We have the capacity to do more and we can do more.”
He pledged to cap the prices of GSK’s drugs in the world’s 50 poorest countries at a quarter of their cost in the United States and Europe. He also promised to reinvest 20% of any residual profit earned in these “least developed countries” in healthcare infrastructure including clinics, distribution systems, and training. He also announced fresh ways to stimulate research and development into a series of “neglected” tropical diseases, by allowing outside researchers to work alongside those at GSK, and to “pool” intellectual property on any of its experimental compounds that could prove useful.
BMJ 2009;338:b686