- Home
- GSK in focus
- The gift of life
The gift of life
GlaxoSmithKline is a major donor of medical products to disaster relief efforts. But how does it get donated medicines to areas devastated by disaster?
When disaster strikes, it is too late to start planning how to get relief supplies into affected areas. Yet, along with water, food and shelter, a prompt supply of relevant medicines is one of the critical components that can save lives and support the recovery effort.
GlaxoSmithKline has a history of supplying essential medicines to non-profit organisations in such crises, when an established, robust process for delivering these products moves into overdrive.
But how is this mammoth task achieved?
In recent years, GSK has donated cash and medicines to almost 100 of the world’s poorest countries, providing both essential and emergency aid to millions of people, in the form of antibiotics and medicines. Communities affected by the following natural disasters have benefited from this supply:
- cyclone in Myanmar
- earthquake in China
- Indian Ocean tsunami
- flooding in Bangladesh
- earthquake in Pakistan
- hurricanes in the Caribbean, Central America and USA
- earthquake in Java Indonesia
As well as medicines, consumer healthcare products such as toothpaste, nutritional drinks and over-the-counter medicines are occasionally donated to provide short-term relief.
In addition to GSK products donated as immediate response to disaster relief, GSK has also supplied medicines for inclusion in travel packs for medics on humanitarian missions.
GSK’s approach to donating medicines is proactive and unique because it additionally offers substantial quantities of product from stock in response to specific requests to meet community needs. The total amount donated varies each year depending on demand and availability.
The company does not, however, have an endless supply of products to donate, so the programme is managed carefully to ensure that the available medicines reach the communities that need them the most.
GSK works with a few carefully-selected charities which have contacts with local medical professionals and are experts in the delivery of humanitarian aid. These include:
- AmeriCares
- Direct relief
- Interchurch Medical Assistance
- MAP International
- Project HOPE
GSK’s donations enable these non-profit organisations to select GSK medicines from an inventory at the start of each year. As a result, they can hold a stock of medicines in their warehouses and establish plans for relief programmes and respond quickly to emergency situations.
Antibiotics are the most frequently requested products as they are essential for fighting life-threatening illness as well as common infections that can escalate in the unsanitary conditions that follow disaster.
Tracking the donations to their destination is a key part of the contract with these non-profit organisations. Through field visits and talking to doctors and hospitals, GSK and non-profit organisations can be sure that the donations are used to improved people’s health and are being dispensed appropriately.
To ensure the integrity of the donation programme, GSK seeks to follow the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drug Donations which were drawn up in 1996 after reports suggested that up to 60 per cent of medicines donated to Turkey, Croatia and Kosovo were inappropriate because they were inadequately labelled, past their expiry date or were simply unknown to local healthcare providers.
GSK’s Global Community Partnerships department also liaises with its local operating company to gain their endorsement for the donation and ensure that they are informed about where the medicines will be distributed.
GSK is also a member of the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations, an alliance of donating pharmaceutical companies and the humanitarian agencies that receive and deliver the products. The alliance works to encourage the donation and timely delivery of medicines to people in need and ensure best practice across all members.
There are those that argue that such donation can increase the dependency on aid in developing countries, but these efforts are carefully targeted at humanitarian relief where such gifts are simply a matter of life or death.
The benefit is summed up in the testimony of a doctor from Direct Relief International returning from a medical mission:
"We visited the Guyana Berbice River area in South America. I was able to treat a man with resistant AIDS-related pneumonia with an antibiotic. He made a complete recovery from the pneumonia, enabling him to return to his wife and daughter and work on his orange farm. Some people may just see a white tablet – I held in my hand something that can save a life, and that is my personal experience.”
