David Pritchard, Vice President of Africa and Developing Countries of Asia for GlaxoSmithKline, outlined the company’s commitment to help Africa reach the global sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Opening this year’s Africa Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC) held in Nairobi, Kenya, David Pritchard highlighted that “GSK is concerned about the many barriers and obstacles people face on the path to better health.
We believe that business has an essential part to play in helping realise the goals. Indeed, without private sector input, the ambition is unlikely to be fully realised.
“To be successful in tackling Africa’s healthcare challenges, collaboration is essential. This is why we are committed to working with Governments, NGOs, our industry and other businesses to reach underserved communities and patients.
“Take the example of our Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Open Lab launched in 2014. We have committed to invest £25 million in the world’s first open lab, enabling African scientists to work with GSK to undertake research on non-communicable diseases.
Research projects will be led by African researchers for the benefit of African patients, in collaboration with GSK scientists. The Open Lab will also support training in collaboration with leading academic and research groups to increase local scientific capability.”
“By also investing in the potential of our healthcare workers, we can empower entire communities to take charge of their health and ultimately, their socio-economic prosperity.
“In the heart of our rural communities, midwives, along with nurses, community health workers and volunteers form the backbone of healthy, thriving communities. They educate families on illnesses like malaria and diarrhoea, and help women give birth safely, and can even be at the forefront of crises like Ebola.
“But there aren’t enough of them. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2030, Africa will suffer from a shortage of almost 6million healthcare workers, leaving huge numbers of communities without access to healthcare.
“To help tackle this problem, GSK along with our partners, seek to release the potential of our community healthcare workers through knowledge transfer. We do this by reinvesting 20% of our profits from Least Developed Countries back into training our healthcare workers.
Since we started this initiative in 2009, we have put in approximately £21 million, trained 43,000 healthcare workers and reached 17.5 million people in 39 countries. But this is only a fraction of what is needed”.
Ultimately, the roles of the public, private and social sector are well defined and interdependent. Put simply, the public sector is well placed to articulate the needs and priorities of its citizens and create an environment where these can be met.
The social sector is well placed to support those most in need and challenge us all to do more. The private sector, in an enabled and welcoming environment, is well placed to provide sustainable and scaled solutions.”
“A partnership approach, where there are no seniors and no juniors, just the acceptance and respect of each partner’s expertise, combined with the ability to constructively challenge each other will be critical to meeting the objectives of the SDGs.
That’s why we at GSK think that forums such as this, where we come to discuss and work together, are so important”.
Instructively, GSK is one of the world’s leading vaccine companies, with a comprehensive portfolio of 39 vaccines for infants, adolescents and adults and 15 more in development.
We have more than 16,000 people working worldwide to deliver nearly 2 (1.9) million vaccines every day to people in around 90% (172) of the world’s countries.
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