The new Access to Medicine Index

Abstract

The Access to Medicine Foundation's new index set out to improve access to medicines through a transparent, quantifiable comparison of corporate social responsibility for 20 pharmaceutical companies. It has turned out as an attractive new business tool for big pharma. The index has taken a strictly business approach to measuring access to essential medicines, presenting data collected from the giant pharmaceutical companies while overlooking crucial information from end-users and local consumers (patients) in developing countries. The core approach of the index, published by a foundation led by a former industry marketing consultant, assesses the pharmaceutical companies on a five-point scale according to criteria developed by a Dutch investment research consultancy. The weakness of the study lies in its “on-paper” approach to measuring the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility programmes. Moreover, the method leaves the results vulnerable to attack. The index is based on information made available by pharmaceutical companies and a few non-governmental organisations, with the largest input coming from surveys of the pharmaceutical industry itself. Five multinational pharmaceutical companies take the top spots in the index, whereas generic manufacturers languish nearer the bottom of the list, despite doing more to improve access to essential medicines for the world's poor through lowering drug prices. This index might give a financial boost to the big brands and their socially conscious investors, but it cannot achieve its objective of real improvements in access to essential medicine in developing countries. The aspiration to produce a quantifiable study of corporate social responsibility standards that promotes access to medicines is laudable. However, measuring access to essential medicines is best achieved by looking at both pharmaceutical policy and the view from the ground. Without accompanying data on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical corporate social responsibility policy, the value of the index is, at best, debatable. Having the rules is not the same as playing by the rules. What we need is a comprehensive analysis of industry performance on access to essential medicines that rewards impact rather than rhetoric and promotes health outcomes rather than investment incentives. I declare that I have no conflict of interest.