•
Power of One donation campaign harnesses the latest web and mobile
technology to rally the global public to fight malaria
• Novartis will donate up to three million courses of pediatric antimalarial treatment to support the campaign
•
Novartis reaches milestone of providing 600 million antimalarial
treatments without profit to malaria-endemic countries
Novartis
and Malaria No More, a leading global charity determined to end malaria
deaths, announced today that they are joining forces on the Power of
One campaign to help close the treatment gap and accelerate progress in
the fight against malaria. Over the next three years, Novartis will
support the campaign financially and also donate up to three million
full courses of its pediatric antimalarial drug to match the treatments
donated by the public, doubling the impact of these donations.
“We
believe that this innovative campaign will help speed malaria
elimination,” said Joseph Jimenez, Novartis Chief Executive Officer.
“Novartis has been striving towards this goal for more than a decade,
and we just reached the milestone of providing 600 million treatments
without profit to patients in malaria-endemic countries. No one should
die from malaria today.”
Malaria
is a preventable and treatable disease, yet a child dies from malaria
every minute. This is against a backdrop of global funding gaps and
concern that the gains made to defeat the disease could be reversed. The
Power of One campaign aims to address this need by closing the global
treatment gap between now and the end of 2015 through direct donations
and existing government commitments.
“The
Power of One campaign challenges the global public to help close the
global treatment gap for malaria; Every dollar raised will buy and
deliver a full course of life-saving child treatment,” said Martin
Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More. “We are delighted to be partnering with
forward-thinking companies like Novartis to help end deaths from this
disease—one dollar and one child at a time.”
Novartis
has joined the Power of One campaign with some of the world’s most
innovative companies, including Alere who will be providing malaria
rapid diagnostic tests, along with Time Warner, Twitter and others. The
campaign will use the latest social, mobile, and e-commerce technologies
to rally the global public to contribute to the campaign.
“Malaria
is a complex issue and needs a multi-pronged collaborative approach. We
can’t solve a problem like this on our own,” said Linus Igwemezie, Head
of the Novartis Malaria Initiative. “Through partnerships, with
organizations like Malaria No More, we can speed up progress toward the
ultimate goal of malaria elimination.”
Power
of One will officially launch in the fall. Until then and to mark the
announcement of this campaign, the first 10,000 people to sign up and
register their interest on the Power of One website at http://www.Po1.org will help provide a treatment to a child with a confirmed case of malaria in Africa.
Novartis reaches 600 million treatment deliveries
Power
of One builds on the Novartis Malaria Initiative’s efforts to eliminate
malaria. Since 2001, a key focus of the company’s commitment has been
to supply its artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) to
malaria-endemic countries. Novartis is proud to announce today that it
has delivered 600 million ACT treatments without profit to the public
sector of more than 60 malaria-endemic countries. This includes the
provision of more than 150 million treatments of the Novartis
antimalarial especially developed for children. Never before have so
many treatments been distributed in such a short time frame to assist
children suffering from malaria.
The
Novartis Malaria Initiative is one of the largest access-to-medicine
programs in the healthcare industry. Moving forward, Novartis is
committed to malaria elimination by driving the development of the next
generation antimalarials, with currently two new classes of anti-malaria
drugs in development. The most advanced compound is in Phase II
clinical trials.
Distributed by the African Press Organization on behalf of Novartis.
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