Our contribution to improving health in the developing world centres on our dedicated TB research and on partnering with others to help fight disease at a community level.
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.
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. These include governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the international community, as well as the private sector. Only by working together can sustainable improvements be achieved.
At AstraZeneca, our contribution centres on two main areas of activity – dedicated TB research and working in partnership to strengthen local healthcare capabilities.
Dedicated TB research
Our dedicated research facility in Bangalore, India is focused on finding a new, improved treatment for TB – 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. You can read more about this in the ’Dedicated TB research’ section.
Working in partnership
In some parts of the developing world, the availability of medicines isn’t always the main challenge. Access to healthcare also depends on having a functional healthcare system, trained healthcare workers and effective 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, 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.
We have defined some common criteria to guide our commitment and ensure that all our partnerships centre on delivering meaningful and enduring benefit. The key principles are that they:
- Lead to positive, measurable outcomes in under-served communities
- Can be scaled up and potentially replicated to improve outcomes for a greater number
- Deliver a sustainable framework that can ultimately be owned and managed locally, without the need for our support.
Such partnerships can also contribute to our business development, by enabling us to understand better the health needs of, and 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. You can read more about these partnerships throughout this section of our website.
Millennium development goals (MDGs)
We continue to work to align our activities with the United Nations MDGs relating to TB. Our TB research supports MDG 6 “Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases” and our engagement with Stop TB Partnership and other collaborative efforts supports MDG 8 “Develop a global partnership for development”.
Access to Medicines Index
AstraZeneca is listed in the Access to Medicines Index - an independent and collaborative tool designed to capture the contributions that the pharmaceutical industry are making in the developing world. Through transparent communication of these efforts, the Index aims to encourage wider stakeholder engagement and further commitment to working together to meet the challenges.
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Detailed share priceAccess to medicines
AstraZeneca is listed in the Access to Medicine Index - an independent ranking of world's largest pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to increase access to medicine for societies in need.
