Novartis unveils portfolio for low- and low-middle-income nations

The treatments on offer – both patented and generic – are all geared towards treating chronic diseases such as diabetes, respiratory illnesses, and breast cancer, to help reign in their growing spread in areas of the world with limited access to healthcare.

“I don’t think any other pharmaceutical company has ever done such a broad approach”, Reinhardt said.

The drug list includes the Swiss company’s valsartan used for hypertension, vildagliptin, which is for diabetes, and a number of generic medications from its Sandoz segment including breast cancer fighter tamoxifen. It will be launched first in Kenya, Ethiopia and Vietnam, while rolling it out to 30 more countries, depending on demand, over the coming years.

Poor healthcare infrastructure and little education about disease, as well as cost, are among the obstacles many people in developing countries face in gaining access to advanced drugs.

The United Nations has highlighted concerns over the developing world’s ability to cope with escalating chronic disease, citing data showing about 85 percent of premature deaths from non-communicable diseases occur in developing countries.

Novartis has high hopes that this new approach will found a new, commercially sustainable model that can be adopted more thoroughly within the industry. So while startup Turing shocked the health scene with the sudden price hike on its drug Daraprim, which treats a parasitic infection and was prescribed to about 9,000 patients previous year, Novartis’ announcement could have far greater implications for global health. “We know we will need to keep an open mind set and learn as we progress on this journey”.

So Novartis, the world’s biggest drugmaker, said Thursday that it made a decision to focus its program on those diseases.

While some may find these statistics surprising, they should not be considering the incursion of calorie-dense, nutrition-poor food in places like Vietnam, where diabetes is spreading rapidly in urban areas as people eschew traditional diets in favor of fast food.