• Home
• Responsibility
• CR Review 2006
• Working with communities

Working with communities

We donate money, medicines and expertise to help under-served communities around the world. The focus of this investment is on programmes that are relevant to our business and the skills of our people - improving healthcare and education.

We make donations at group level to support disease prevention and increase healthcare capacity in developing countries and at individual site level to support local communities.

Here we outline four of our major programmes aimed at improving healthcare and disease prevention in developing countries. Details on many of our other community investments are provided in our full CR report.

Value of our investment
In 2006, GSK donations were valued at £302 million ($558 million) compared to £380 million ($691 million) in 2005. This is equivalent to 3.9 per cent of pre-tax profits, compared with 5.6 per cent in 2005.

This figure includes medicines worth £200 million ($370 million) donated to low-income patients in the US through our Patient Assistance Programs. The value of this declined in 2006 due to the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

GSK is a member of the UK’s Percent Club for companies which donate at least 1 per cent of their pre-tax profits to charitable causes. GSK was listed sixth in the UK’s Guardian Giving List which lists FTSE 100 companies by the percentage of pre-tax profits contributed to charitable causes. This was based on our donations reported in 2005. For the fifth year in a row we were the biggest overall giver in the value of our donations.

We belong to the UK’s London Benchmarking Group and the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) in the US. We report our donations in common with CECP guidelines which value our medicines at wholesale acquisition cost, in line with other pharmaceutical companies. Wholesale acquisition cost is the wholesale list price, not including discounts.

Eliminating lymphatic filariasis (LF)
Over 15 per cent of the world’s population is at risk of infection with LF – a disfiguring disease prevalent in tropical countries. LF can lead to severe swelling of the arms, legs, breasts and genitals and is one of the world’s leading causes of permanent disability.

We are a founding partner in the Global Alliance to Eliminate LF (www.filariasis.org) which aims to eliminate the disease by 2020. We have committed to provide as many doses of albendazole, our anti-parasitic drug used to prevent transmission of LF, as are needed. So far we have donated almost 600 million treatments and we expect to donate around six billion tablets in total.

Each country aiming to eliminate LF must treat all at -risk people with two drugs (albendazole and diethylcarbamazine or Mectizan®) once a year for at least five years. So far, Egypt, several Pacific Island countries, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Togo and Burkina Faso have completed five annual mass drug administrations. Now these countries are monitoring their populations and the impact of the programme on the disease. The data show that transmission of the disease has been stopped in most endemic areas of Egypt.

The LF programme promises to make a major contribution to health in tropical countries. We are committed to helping the Global Alliance overcome any obstacles to the programme’s success. For example, one of the challenges will be the integration of LF programmes with interventions for other neglected tropical diseases which may involve co-administration of albendazole with other medicines.

Positive Action on HIV and AIDS
Tackling the AIDS pandemic requires more than effective medicines. Stigma and discrimination are major barriers which prevent many people from coming forward for testing or treatment.

Our Positive Action programme, set up in 1992, supports the communities most affected by HIV and AIDS. It aims to strengthen the capacity of community organisations providing prevention, education and healthcare services. One of the key goals is to reduce stigma and discrimination. During 2006, programmes were supported in 17 countries.

We recently extended Positive Action to Asia. Research suggests there will be a catastrophic AIDS epidemic in this region if disease prevention and treatment efforts do not improve. In partnership with the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), Positive Action is continuing to support TREAT Asia, a network of clinics, hospitals, research institutions and patient support organisations helping communities prepare for new treatment programmes. This includes community projects in China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam and the creation of a regional advocacy network.

In India, Positive Action is supporting Freedom from Hunger’s Reach India project which aims to tackle cultural and social factors that expose rural women to HIV. Reach India uses self help groups, a respected way for women to access information and support, to educate women about HIV and AIDS. It will reach 500,000 women and their three million family members in its first three years and train local organisations in delivering education projects.

GSK’s African Malaria Partnership
Our African Malaria Partnership has supported education and behaviour change programmes in eight African countries since 2003. However we believe that the scale of the malaria problem requires a different and broader response.  We have made a three year grant of over £800,000 ($1.5 million) to Mobilising for Malaria, an advocacy initiative aiming to generate greater awareness, political commitment and sustained funding to combat the disease. As part of this, National Coalitions Against Malaria have been launched in the UK, Belgium, France, Ethiopia and Cameroon, bringing together advocates and activists, from the public sector, NGOs, the media, the private sector and the political, academic and scientific communities.

Method of giving