As my colleague Maribel Rios discussed in her blog this week, the recent outbreak of swine flu gives us pause to consider our pandemic preparedness. The events of this past week also makes us more aware of the interrelationships and complexity of global public health, giving rise to an even broader question, has the pharmaceutical industry as a whole met its responsibility in effectuating global public health?

A recent report by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) said that the pharmaceutical industry provided health interventions (i.e., medicines, vaccines, training, and education) to nearly 1.4 billion people in developing nations at a value of $6.7 billion between 2000–2006. The same report cites results of a survey by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, a corporate philanthropy forum of global company CEOs, which surveyed 136 major corporations’ giving in 2006. Overall, it found that companies gave an average of 0.88% of their pretax profits, but within the health sector (in which 10 out of 16 companies were pharmaceutical companies), the average was higher at 3.70%.

The IFPMA report provides an overview of long-term health development programs implemented by the research-based pharmaceutical industry and partners to help achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations. The MDGs were adopted by 189 United Nations’ member states in 2000 as part of a global health initiative with one goal being to improve ways to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases that particularly afflict the developing world.

The IFPMA report provides examples of how companies are improving access to basic medicines and critical treatments such as HIV/AIDS therapies through reduced pricing and improved distribution as well as through original research to develop drugs to treat neglected diseases. These efforts are being encouraged through international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, developed countries, and nongovernmental organizations. Corporate philanthropy is an important, although certainly not a complete solution, to combat the medical problems of developing nations, but is an area in which all efforts, including new models, should be recognized and further encouraged.

One such effort is the work of The Institute for OneWorld Health, which characterizes itself as the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States. The company has a specific corporate mission to address unmet medical needs in developing countries through pharmaceutical product development by providing drug lead identification and optimization, conducting clinical trials, and securing regulatory approvals of new medicines. The company was founded in 2000 by Victoria Hale, who held positions with Genentech and the US Food and Drug Administration, and who now serves as the company’s chair emeritus.

The group’s projects include the development of a semisynthetic route to artemisinin; artemisinin derivatives are used in combination therapies to treat malaria. Artemisinin is derived from the wormwood plant in Asia and Africa, and the goal of the project is to create a complementary source of nonseasonal, high-quality, and affordable artemisinin to supplement the current botanical supply and meet future demand for artemisinin-based combination therapies. The project is funded and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the California Institute of Quanitative Biomedical Research at the University of California at Berkeley, Amyris Biotechnologies, and sanofi-aventis.

The artemisinin project shows the innovation in the business models and partnerships that can be used to address the medical needs of the developing world. It is hoped that the pharmaceutical industry and others will continue and deepen these efforts.