GlaxoSmithKline has joined an international effort to help eliminate sleeping sickness, leprosy, elephantiasis, blind trachoma and guinea worm in developing countries.
Those diseases and five others have been designated as neglected tropical diseases by the World Health Organization. The international group says they affect more than 1 billion people and have targeted them for elimination or control.
GlaxoSmithKline plans to donate more of its medicine to treat children at risk for intestinal worms.
The British company, which has its North American headquarters in Research Triangle Park, will donate an additional 400 million albendazole tablets a year for the next five years. The latest commitment brings GSK's total donation to the World Health Organization to 1 billion tablets a year.
The additional pills will cost GSK about $19 million a year and the company will spend another "couple million" to increase production at drug factories in South Africa and India.
Neglected tropical diseases are “a priority” for GSK, CEO Andrew Witty said during a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “We are very keen to do more."
Such donations help to polish GSK's image as a global drug maker that gives back, and to deflect criticism over the prices of its medicines.
Recently, after we published the article, "Pandemic flu kills NC child," we received a complaint from a reader. "Your use of the word 'pandemic'...was disingenuous and I think quite unfortunate," the reader wrote. "There is no H1N1 pandemic. It is certainly a severe disease especially for high-risk patients, but there is no pandemic and barely an epidemic as of now. For sure your headline and the article were attention getting, but the exaggerated and incorrect use of the adjective destroyed its credibility."
We were correct to use the term 'pandemic,' which refers to the widespread nature of an infection, not the severity. Based on infections rates worldwide, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 influenza a pandemic in June. Read that article here. For a good Q and A on the subject from N&O reporter Sarah Avery, click here.
--John Drescher
