Access to medicines

We have global guidelines on how patient access should be considered before and after launch of a new medicine.

Despite significant advances in healthcare in recent decades, many diseases are still under-diagnosed or not well treated, or there is not yet an effective therapy. Continued innovation is required to address these unmet medical needs. At the same time, the growing demand for healthcare, driven by people living longer, increasing populations and the emergence of new economies, means ever greater pressure on the payers’ budgets.

At AstraZeneca, our challenge is to balance the associated downward pressure on the price of medicines with the cost of the continued innovation that brings benefit for patients and society.

This section provides information about how we price our medicines and protect our intellectual property to generate the income that underpins our continued investment in bringing new medicines to market. We also describe how innovative medicines can bring economic as well as therapeutic benefit, helping to contribute to the economic development of the communities in which we operate.

We recognise that we have a role to play in improving health in the developing world, where the availability of medicines is not always the primary challenge. You can read about how we are using our skills and resources to help in the In the Developing World section of this website.

In December 2009, AstraZeneca signed an agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO) which committed at least 3 million doses of our live, attenuated intranasal vaccine for H1N1 to be distributed at WHO’s discretion as well as a cash donation to help support those distribution efforts. WHO have processes in place to allow for legal distribution and use of the product in countries where it is not currently approved for marketing.

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376.10 SEK

At 09-Sep-2010 08:07  GMT