Drugmakers from around the world will invest a combined $50 million over three years to combat cancer and other non-communicable diseases in developing countries, reports Reuters.
Here are five things to know.
- The Access Accelerated initiative, backed by the World Bank, was announced Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
- Twenty-two drug companies — including Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline — will participate.
- The drugmakers will work with the Union for International Cancer Control to test new diagnostics and treatments in several cities across the world as a pilot program.
- Severin Schwan, CEO of Roche, said some companies have already implemented preferential pricing for the developing world, although cost is only one obstacle to limiting access to healthcare.
"It has a lot to do with hospital infrastructure. You can't administer modern cancer medicines if you don't have sophisticated lab facilities," Mr. Schwan told Reuters. "We're going to institutionalize cooperation in this area."
- Sanofi CEO Olivier Brandicourt, MD, said the $50 million investment — from an industry with global sales of around $1 trillion a year — was just a start, according to the report.
"The $50 million is more like [seed] funding, if you want, and based on the results we'll gather afterwards we will have a more ambitious program with more stakeholders between 2020 and 2030," Dr. Brandicourt said.