In the Global Community
Wherever AstraZeneca is located worldwide, we aim to make a positive contribution to our local communities through sponsorships, charitable donations and other initiatives that help to make a difference. Our activities are focused on bringing sustainable benefit in ways that are consistent with our business of improving health and quality of life, and of promoting the value of science among young people.
In January 2009, we launched a revised and strengthened global Community Support Policy to provide an enhanced platform for capturing, aligning and maximising the benefit of our community support commitments worldwide. Targeted training for all relevant staff is being provided. As well as community support, the policy describes the requirements regarding product donations and support to patient groups and other healthcare organisations.
In 2009, we spent a total of $882 million (2008: $718 million) on community sponsorships and charitable donations worldwide, including our product donation and patient assistance programmes which make our medicines available free of charge or at reduced prices. Our expanded patient assistance programmes in the US contributed to a total commitment of $786 million worth of product donations valued at an average wholesale price (2008: $646 million). The increase is because more people enrolled in our US AZ&Me patient assistance programme and used more medicines in 2009 due, we believe, to the economic recession. Our community support spend ($96 million) included a contribution during the year of $25 million to the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation for its cardiovascular programme which is focused on improving cardiovascular health in the US.
We also contribute where possible to disaster relief efforts. During 2009, when typhoons Ketsana and Parma hit the Philippines, causing widespread devastation, we donated medicines to the relief effort and 15 of our employees did voluntary work with the Philippine army, helping over 1,000 flood victims. We responded similarly with donations to the local relief effort when earthquakes hit Indonesia and, when typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan, AstraZeneca Asia Pacific made a $200,000 donation to the local Red Cross.
At a global level, we also made a further contribution of $240,000 to the Red Cross Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, established in 2006 by the Red Cross with $700,000 of funding from AstraZeneca. The Centre continues to play an important role in disaster relief in the Asia Pacific region. With pre-positioned emergency supplies, the Centre was able to respond quickly to the events in 2009, distributing hygiene kits to thousands of people in need in the affected areas. Our 2009 donation, coupled with one of $200,000 that we made in 2008, has enabled the Red Cross to maintain appropriate levels of emergency relief stock at the Centre.
In January 2010, following the earthquake in Haiti, we donated medicines and contributed a total of $500,000 to the British Red Cross Emergency Appeal. We also committed an additional $500,000 to support a longer-term disaster recovery programme that will give the people of Haiti the help they need to re-build their lives and their communities.
In the developing world
Whilst we remain committed to making a contribution to improving healthcare in the developing world, we believe that real progress can only be made through the commitment of all the related stakeholders, including governments, NGOs and the international community, as well as the private sector. Only by working together can sustainable improvements be achieved.
The medicines in our range today are not for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS and malaria, currently the developing world's most significant disease challenges, but we are applying our skills and resources to helping in other ways. Our contribution centres on two main areas of activity - dedicated TB research and working in partnership to help strengthen local health capabilities.
Dedicated TB research
Our dedicated research facility in Bangalore, India is focused on finding a new, improved treatment for TB, which is a major cause of illness and death worldwide, especially in Asia and Africa. AstraZeneca is the only major pharmaceutical company with a research programme in India totally dedicated to TB. Further information can be found in the Therapy Area Review in the Infection section.
Working in partnership
In some parts of the developing world, the availability of medicines is not always the main challenge. Access to healthcare also depends on having a functional healthcare system, trained healthcare workers and effective supply and distribution mechanisms in place to ensure that medicines are used to their full effect as part of overall health management. To help meet these challenges, alongside our ongoing TB research, we partner with NGOs and other organisations working with local communities to strengthen their frameworks for delivering healthcare in TB and other disease areas in a sustainable way.
Key principles for our partnerships are that they lead to positive, measurable outcomes, can be scaled up and potentially replicated to improve outcomes for a greater number, and can deliver a sustainable framework that can ultimately be owned and managed locally, without the need for our support. We also aim to ensure that such partnerships can contribute to our business development, by enabling us to understand better the health needs of, and to build important relationships in, markets of the future.
Our current partnerships are primarily focused on helping hard-hit communities in Asia and Africa to combat TB, which is on the increase in these regions, but we also have some programmes in other disease areas and in other countries.
Our long-standing partnership with the British Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies includes support to community-based programmes in Central Asia that are helping to combat TB and to improve the quality of life of people living with TB and TB/HIV co-infection in the hard-hit areas of Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. To date, these programmes have helped over 10,000 people living with TB or TB/HIV to complete their TB treatment, with treatment completion rates reaching 89%, 92% and 73% in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, respectively. Alongside this, the Red Crescent Society has delivered TB awareness campaigns that have reached over two million people in the region. The long-term presence of the Red Crescent Society in Central Asia has enabled the organisation to build effective and far reaching community programmes. These activities continue to contribute to a reduction in TB incidence and mortality in Central Asia.
Our partnership with the African Medical and Research Foundation is focused on developing a model for the integrated management of TB, HIV/AIDS and malaria at both national and local levels in Uganda, where there is a high incidence of all three diseases. This integrated management approach has not been widely addressed previously and we are one of the few organisations involved in such work. A pilot programme is now underway in the high incidence areas of the Luwero and Kiboga districts of central Uganda. Key targets include increasing laboratory diagnostic capacity and improving community-based healthcare management. Progress to date includes the completion and handover to local district management teams of three new laboratories and the establishment of 144 village health teams, with a total of over 750 people trained in health promotion in their local communities.
In Ethiopia, our partnership with Axios is focused on building local capability in managing breast cancer, which is the second most common cancer among young women in that country. The project has focused on strengthening diagnosis and treatment capabilities, including the creation of previously unavailable treatment protocols and standardised reporting guidelines for use across the country. Benefits to the patient have included reduced time between diagnosis and surgery (from 12-18 months in 2006 to three to six months in 2009).
Our support to Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) includes working in partnership to help them further develop their strategy and framework for delivering their health goals. We also fund VSO volunteers working to build local healthcare capabilities in under-served communities across Africa and Asia. Alongside this, our employees are able to volunteer for placements in appropriate countries to support VSO, drawing on the broad range of skills they can offer in human resources, finance, information technology and communications, as well as health and medicine.
More information about these partnerships and our other activities worldwide is available on our website, astrazeneca.com/responsibility.
Engaging at international level
As part of our focus on TB, we actively engage in international efforts to help in the fight against this devastating disease.
AstraZeneca participates in the Gates Global Health CEO Roundtable, the purpose of which is to bring together the world's leading pharmaceutical companies with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage our respective areas of strength and expertise in the pursuit of global health priorities. We will continue to partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on TB in a variety of projects spanning early phase drug discovery through to development of suitable regulatory pathways for new agents.
During 2009, we also continued our involvement with the Stop TB Partnership, which aims to forge a more effective response to TB, and strengthen strategic impact, by engaging a broad range of stakeholders, including the private sector, foundations, academic and research institutions, the media, NGOs and civil society.
AstraZeneca is the only major pharmaceutical company involved in the New Medicines for TB project, begun in 2006. Funded by a grant from the EU Framework VI programme and consisting of around 15 groups of Europe's most prominent scientists and researchers in the field, this consortium seeks to combine academic and pharmaceutical skills to further the discovery of new therapies for TB.
