On World AIDS Day, BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM announced the extension of its donation programme beyond its original five-year period, under which the company supplies medicines free of charge to developing countries for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus. It has also teamed up with the International Council of Nurses and the Zambian Nurses Association to provide health care workers in Zambia with free access to the company’s HIV medicine.

ABBOTT has committed £57 million over the next five years to help fight HIV/AIDS in the developing world through its four Global Care Initiatives – programmes addressing major needs in this area, including product access, care for orphans and vulnerable children affected and infected by the disease, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and strengthening local health care infrastructure capacity. Abbott offers its two antiretroviral treatments at a loss and its HIV rapid test at no profit in 68 developing countries, including all of Africa.

BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB’s Secure The Future programme is a five-year, £65 million commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa. The partnership with several African countries seeks to find sustainable and relevant solutions for the management of HIV/AIDS in women and children. In December 2003, BMS gave an additional £17 million to the programme.

JOHNSON & JOHNSON contributed towards Everyone’s Child Romania, a christian charity based in Wales that has been set up to support children and families suffering from HIV/AIDS.

The African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships is a joint initiative by the Merck Foundation, the government of Botswana and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, developing a programme that focuses on the prevention, care, support and treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS and related conditions. The government of Romania and MERCK SHARP & DOHME have worked together to improve access to treatment for thousands of infected children and adults, with the result that Romania is one of the few countries in the world to offer universal access to specialist antiretroviral medicines.

PFIZER makes major grants to support 20 organisations working in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. A regional treatment and training institute is under construction in Uganda to strengthen local capacity in HIV/AIDS care and treatment for thousands of people. A public-private partnership donates a antifungal product to 20 countries and 915 sites around the world to tackle opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDs in developing countries. The company sends talented employees for up to six months to support non-governmental organisations fighting HIV/AIDS, who serve as physicians, epidemiologists, nurses educators and business consultants.

To help access to HIV/AIDS medicines, ROCHE has developed partnerships with governments, non-governmental organisations and other groups, for example, the PharmAccess Care Programme in four African countries. Roche has also donated technical expertise and rights to its anti-malarial therapies and has contributed its knowledge and expertise to help address Chagas disease.

GLAXOSMITHKLINE makes a vital contribution three areas: supplying antiviral and anti-malarial medicines at not-for-profit prices and vaccines at significant discounts, investing in research and community investment activities and joining in partnerships that support better healthcare. The company also sends donations of appropriate products to support emergency humanitarian relief efforts. GSK supported 39 international programmes of education and care for communities affected by HIV/AIDS in 34 countries. The GSK African Malaria Partnership disbursed the first grants in a £800,000 three-year initiative that provides support for behavioural development programmes in seven malaria-endemic countries. GSK donated 94 million treatments of albendazole to prevent transmission of one of the world’s most disabling tropical diseases, lymphatic filariasis. In one day in July 2003, 10 million people in Sri Lanka received albendazole tablets donated by GSK.

As part of an ongoing initiative to eliminate river blindness, MERCK has donated more than 250 million doses of its medicine ivermectin through a network of international organisations and non-governmental development organisations.

WYETH is supplying a newly-developed pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to support a five-year clinical trial in the Gambia. It is also supervising a clinical trial of a compound for the treatment of river blindness. Wyeth has also donated products in response to disaster relief, such as cholera and typhoid vaccines in Central America and Macedonia, polio vaccines for Romania and antibiotics for Armenia.

Pfizer is involved in the International Trachoma Initiative which also provides treatment for the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.

Impact Malaria, an initiative from SANOFI-SYNTHELABO, is a programme to discover and develop new anti-malaria medicines, to develop educational and training programmes and to make medicines available to the populations of developing countries. In partnership with African and international research institutes, grants will be made to finance clinical or basic research on malaria to support young researchers from countries in which malaria is endemic.

The Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development has programmes in Asia, Africa and Latin America and aims to work at the policy and local levels to improve the quality of life of the world’s poorest people. The NOVARTIS Access to Treatment projects include initiatives with the WHO in leprosy and malaria, a donation of 100,000 tuberculosis treatments a year for five years, providing 11,000 intraocular lenses in developing countries and donating emergency relief and supporting major humanitarian organisations in times of emergency medical needs. Novartis and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have entered into a collaboration to develop paediatric formulation of a therapy for uncomplicated falciparum malaria to treat the millions of infants from malaria. The Novartis Institute for Tropical Disease has been set up in Singapore and will concentrate on treatments for TB and dengue fever.

ASTRAZENECA and the Red Cross have joined forces in delivering a programme designed to help combat tuberculosis in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, where there are more than 9,400 new cases of TB every year. In December, AstraZeneca announced a £200,000 three-year partnership with Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management to fund the China Centre for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research in programmes aimed at supporting the reform of China’s health care system. The company is providing £60,000 over four years to BookPower, a non-profit organisation that provides medical and nursing textbooks to countries in the developing world.

AVENTIS continues its support of the Nelson Mandela Foundation in its fight against tuberculosis in South Africa, with a contribution of more than £10 million over five years. A joint initiative between Aventis and the World Health Organisation will conduct public awareness programmes of sleeping sickness and accelerate surveillance and control activities.

ELI LILLY unveiled details of a global public-private partnership to increase the number of trained personnel and medicines available to treat the growing crisis of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Lilly has also announced a collaboration with the International Diabetes Federation and Rotary International on the IDF Child Sponsorship Programme Life for a Child with Diabetes. The programme will run in developing countries and the company has committed £100,000, while Lilly employees have already contributed more than £50,000. Lilly also donated medicines worth more than £2.5 million to support healthcare projects in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Through the Director General, the ABPI is actively involved in the Medicines for Malaria Venture project (MMV), which has now developed the most extensive portfolio of development projects that has ever existed. Working with 12 pharmaceutical companies, MMV is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to working to provide the next generation of medicines for this major cause of death in the developing world. The ABPI has also been instrumental in the provision of information to physicians in less developed countries and has worked closely with charitable organisations in South Africa to ensure the provision of medicines for children with HIV.