About the Access to Medicine Index

Preventable and treatable diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis continue to claim millions of lives every year. About two billion people cannot afford the drugs or vaccines that they need. Hundreds of millions are afflicted with neglected diseases for which no affordable remedies have been developed or for which treatments fail to reach patients.

According to World Health Organization estimates, improving access to medicines could save 10 million lives each year. Governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector all have to play a part.

The Access to Medicine Index highlights one part of the solution: the efforts of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to help solve this global crisis. The Index also encourages companies, as well as all other stakeholders, to do even more.

Goals

The Access to Medicine Index serves three major goals:

• Supply investors, governments, academics, nongovernmental organizations and the general public with independent, impartial and reliable information on individual pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to improve global access to medicines;
• Provide pharmaceutical companies themselves with a transparent means by which to assess, monitor and improve their own performance and their public and investment profiles.
• Provide a platform on which all stakeholders can continuously discuss best practices and lessons learned in the area of global access to medicines.

Independent, impartial and reliable

Each year, the Index will score companies according to their performance on a wide range of criteria. Index measurements and ratings will be published on the Index website, providing companies, investors and other stakeholders with independent, impartial and reliable data.

Thanks to the Index, companies will be able to better steer their efforts towards best practices and showcase their past efforts to the outside world; investors will be able to pick and choose companies that have most effectively stepped up to the plate. Media will be able to give credit to companies that take their societal responsibility very seriously. Other stakeholders to the issue, such as governments, academic researchers and NGOs, will be able to identify those companies that make the most effective collaboration partners.

Last but not least, through continuing stakeholder dialogue, the Index will provide a permanent tool through which lessons can be learned and best practices can be shared.