Lilly’s corporate social responsibility vision is to catalyze sustainable access to healthcare for underserved populations.
Around the world, millions of people lack access to medicines and other forms of health care. Access to medicines is a complex global issue with different manifestations depending on the location. Varying economic levels, government roles, and approaches to providing health care all influence the accessibility and effectiveness of medicines.
In the U.S., approximately 46 million people in the U.S. were without health insurance coverage in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and many others have limited coverage. As the cost of health care has risen, even people with health insurance are paying a higher portion of the cost out-of-pocket. For the uninsured and underinsured, the cost of medical treatment and prescription drugs may be an obstacle to getting the care and medicines they need.
In other parts of the world, the cost of medicine is just one factor that prevents people from obtaining needed treatment. In developing countries, other issues can present access barriers. Among them are the capacity and efficiency of a country’s health care system to distribute and dispense medicines, the ability to provide accurate diagnoses, and the availability of preventive and follow-up care. “Neglected diseases” in developing countries may be subject to limited pharmaceutical innovation and, thus, limited treatment options. And pharmaceutical companies’ use of patent protection to protect intellectual property and secure exclusive rights to market a medicine is seen by some to be a factor in preventing access to medicines in both the developed and developing world.
Improving access to medicines is an enormous challenge. Tackling the issue requires the best efforts of governments, the private sector, multilateral institutions, and civil society. At Lilly, we know we can’t solve all the problems, so we focus in areas where we can make a difference.
In the U.S. we donate products through several patient assistance programs that in 2008 helped more than 173,000 patients obtain needed medications. We also promote access to medicines and health and wellness by connecting to patients of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds.
Internationally, Lilly partners with governments to identify appropriate solutions to improve access to medicines in developing and less-developed countries. These solutions might include donations of cash and products for patient assistance programs, international humanitarian causes, and other charitable endeavors, as well as public–private partnerships. Lilly identifies solutions that we believe will deliver a measurable, positive impact on patient care and that are designed to provide long-term solutions to specifically address limits in the infrastructure of developing countries.
International agreements provide mechanisms through which the governments of less developed countries can gain the right to make patent-protected medicines in certain circumstances through “compulsory licensing.” Lilly is selective in its patent portfolio strategies. Our current product line is not in great demand in less-developed countries, so our practice is not to file patents in most of those countries, although we make our medicines available in many less-developed countries through our network of sales representatives. This leaves these markets open for drug manufacturers to make available generic versions of Lilly medicines that are patented elsewhere. It also means that Lilly products generally have not been subject to compulsory licensing.
Lilly believes that public–private partnerships are a key means of addressing neglected diseases—diseases characterized by a high global burden and low financial support of research. We support continued efforts to engage and partner with relevant stakeholders in seeking sustainable ways to increase research on neglected diseases and sharing our medical expertise with nonprofit organizations and other medical professionals.
Lilly’s ambitious global access program is the Lilly Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) Partnership. This comprehensive program addresses a rising global health threat by making Lilly medicines available, transferring technology so that the medicines can be made where they are needed, and building capacity in health care systems by training doctors and nurses to treat the disease. The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership also works locally in countries with high rates of tuberculosis to increase awareness and prevention, advocate for patients, and reduce the stigma related to the disease. We also support research for the disease through the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative, a public-private partnership launched in 2007 with the Infectious Disease Research Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to fill the early-stage pipeline for TB drug development. For this initiative, Lilly has opened access to a library of 500,000 compounds and is contributing drug-discovery technologies and expertise in the search for new TB medicines.
