GlaxoSmithKline - one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical companies - is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer.

GSK plays a full part in addressing the healthcare challenges of Africa by taking an innovative, responsible and, above all, sustainable approach. Our core business activity of developing and launching new medicines and vaccines significantly improves health, and we have a widerange of policies and programmes specifically targeted at improving healthcare in Africa, thereby enhancing productive economic development.

GSK is a UK-based company with 110,000 employees in 80 countries

trade

Alongside other members of Business Action for Africa, GSK has been a supporter of a positive outcome of the Doha Trade Round for Africa.

human development

GSK makes a vital contribution to human development through action in four areas to improve the health and human development of the people of Africa.

1. Preferential pricing of our antiretrovirals, anti-malarials and vaccines – all our ARVs and anti-malarials are available at not-for-profit prices to a wide range of customers in all of sub-Saharan Africa

2. Investing in research and development (R&D) that targets diseases particularly affecting the developing world - we believe that we are the only company undertaking R&D into the prevention and treatment of all three of the World Health Organisation’s priority diseases in the developing world, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria

3. Community investment activities that foster effective healthcare - we target four major developing world diseases (lymphatic filariasis, HIV/AIDS, malaria and diarrhoeal disease; and, innovative partnerships and solutions – we have granted 7 voluntary licences on our AIDS medicines in Africa

4. In the 2005 Africa Investors Awards, GSK’s finished runner-up in the ‘Best Initiative in Support of The Millennium Development Goals’ category for its Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) initiative in South Africa, Namibia, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, whose partners also include WHO and UNICEF. GSK has been involved with IMCI since 1997, in which time it has provided a total in excess of $1.8m to a range of activities that aim to reduce childhood deaths from preventable and treatable conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, as well as help families to improve the health of their children through better nutrition and healthcare.

perceptions

In 2005 GSK CEO, JP Garnier, visited Africa and reported on the challenges, but also the great causes for optimism he found there, in a number of UK national newspapers.