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Media releases > Beyond Philanthropy
New standard of corporate social responsibility for drugs companies
(23 July 2002)
Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO have developed an industry standard for assessing the corporate social responsibility of drugs companies in responding to the health crisis in the developing world.
In Beyond Philanthropy, published in 2002, the three development agencies propose a set of benchmarks to assist investors in assessing the social responsibility of pharmaceutical companies. These benchmarks relate to company policies and practices in five key areas which impact on access to medicines for the 14 million children and adults who die each year from infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. The key areas are: pricing, patents, joint public private initiatives, research and development and appropriate use of medicines.
26 people die every minute from infectious diseases, these deaths are avoidable. Drugs companies can and should do more. Investors too have a vital role to play as how they invest their money can have a positive influence on people's lives. There is a direct link between the city investor and an HIV positive baby in Zambia,
said Sophia Tickell, Senior Policy Advisor at Oxfam. These new benchmarks are a helpful contribution to a complex area of corporate social responsibility, and should encourage better performance from these companies,
said Joanna Johnston, company analyst at Morley Fund Management, part of the investment conglomerate CGNU.
Morley is hosting a meeting of investors and pharmaceutical companies today (16 July, see notes to editors) to discuss Beyond Philanthropy, 14 firms have confirmed their attendance including HSBC and ABN Amro.
The benchmarks evolved from a survey of eleven leading drugs companies looking at their policies towards the developing world. The report points out that, despite recent progress by some companies, far more needs to be done, especially on pricing.
Many drugs, particularly those for HIV/AIDS, cost the same in poor countries as they do here, but the average person in Uganda earns about 50p per day which puts treatment right out of their league. We need a global approach to tiered pricing, in which companies would offer, on a systematic basis, substantially lower prices. This would be a far more useful contribution than the current ad hoc and limited donations,
says Ken Bluestone, Senior Policy Advisor at VSO. As calls mount for better corporate accountability, pharmaceutical companies must be encouraged to put hard facts into the public domain,
commented Annie Heaton, private sector research analyst at Save the Children.
We need a level playing field on which investors can hold companies to account in a systematic and comparable way. This will have far more impact on the 1,000 children who die hourly from infectious diseases than the current cherry-picking approach exhibited by the pharmaceutical industry.
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