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Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Response to assurance recommendations

Bureau Veritas assured the Access to medicines section of our CR Report 2007 (see details on pages 49-50) and made recommendations for how we could improve our reporting on access to medicines in four key areas.

Below we report these challenges and how we have responded:

1. Vision – GSK could further enhance and communicate its overall vision and strategy on access to medicines. This should demonstrate a holistic, long-term approach; articulate the business case; provide context and explain how it is integrated into its overall business strategy.

GSK response: In June 2001, GSK published ‘Facing the Challenge’ which summarised our approach and contribution to improving access to medicines, and the principles underlying our approach. In 2008 Andrew Witty assumed the position of CEO of GSK and instigated a review of our approach to access to medicines. In a major speech at Harvard University in February 2009, Andrew Witty set out our approach to improving access to medicines in the developing world and the initiatives we will implement in 2009.

2. Governance – GSK should provide greater detail on the governance, accountability and management structures for access to medicines and the relationship with external stakeholders.

GSK response: Abbas Hussain, President of Emerging Markets at GSK, leads our access efforts which are also reviewed by the Corporate Executive Team, GSK’s most senior management team, and by the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the Board. In 2008, we have continued to engage with stakeholders on access issues including the ATM Index and participating in the development of a report on GSK’s approach by Paul Hunt, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health.

3. Transparency – GSK provides significant information and case studies but should also consider how to provide greater transparency on the impacts of its access to medicines initiatives and how to put these into context in relation to its overall operating model.

GSK response: Assessing the impacts of our access to medicines programme is a challenge. We report data on the number of tablets shipped through our preferential pricing programmes and voluntary licence agreements, but it is difficult to translate these figures into numbers of patients receiving treatment as we are not involved in healthcare delivery. Our medicines are also used in combination with medicines supplied by other pharmaceutical companies, so simply converting our shipments into patient numbers would be misleading.

The Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI), a public-private partnership working to combat HIV/AIDS, calculates treatment rates using medicines supplied by the nine R&D-based pharmaceutical companies involved in the partnership. It estimated that by December 2007, around 875,000 patients in developing countries were receiving at least one ARV treatment supplied by the companies.

Where we are able to generate robust data on the impact of our programmes we will seek to do so. For example in October 2008 significant data on the lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination programme was published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Journal of Neglected Tropical Diseases¹. The study found that, in the ten years since GSK’s commitment, the LF elimination programme has prevented 6.6 million children from acquiring LF and stopped a further 9.5 million infected people from progressing to more debilitating stages. All of this is the result of the fastest-growing drug administration programme in public health history, delivering what the study calls the ‘best buy in public health’.

4. Measuring performance – linked to transparency, GSK should consider how to provide relevant indicators that demonstrate the implementation of a long-term strategy and promote comparisons across the industry.

GSK response: We welcome comparisons across the industry on performance on access to medicines; however, since approaches differ significantly between companies, making meaningful comparisons is a challenge. What is right for one company may not be right for another.

A method of ranking companies on their approach to access to medicines was developed during 2008, the Access to Medicines Index. GSK was ranked top in the first Access to Medicines Index, published in 2008. The Index rates companies according to their performance on eight criteria: management, influence, research and development, patenting, capacity, pricing, drug donations and philanthropy. We are pleased that our efforts to make our medicines more available have been recognised by the Index.

Additionally, during 2008 we were asked by Paul Hunt, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, to contribute to a report he was preparing on GSK’s approach to access to medicines. We cooperated fully and a number of senior executives, including our former CEO, Dr JP Garnier, and our Chairman Sir Christopher Gent, were interviewed. We expect the report to be published in the first half of 2009.

1 www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000317