BASEL: The Basel-based drugmaker company has announced not to make a profit on 15 generic drugs it is making available to developing countries to treat symptoms of COVID-19.
Novartis company said that it would provide medicines ranging from antibiotics and steroids to diarrhea pills to 79 countries on the World Bank’s list of low- and lower-middle-income nations.
Novartis Global Health Chief Operating Officer Lutz Hegemann said that this new programme aimed to help to keep vulnerable healthcare systems in Africa, Asia, South America, and European countries Ukraine and Moldova from becoming overloaded.
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“We should not underestimate the stress that COVID puts particularly on fragile health systems,” Hegemann said by adding Novartis hopes to work with health authorities, faith-based organizations, and NGOs to eliminate big markups.
“We are not targeting classical commercial distribution channels, but very direct channels, to influence that to the extent we can,” he said. Novartis’s brand-name drugs have had little application in treating the new coronavirus.
The list includes antibiotics amoxicillin, ceftriaxone, clarithromycin, vancomycin and levofloxacin, steroids dexamethasone, prednisone, and prednisolone, gout treatment colchicine, heart failure drug dobutamine, antifungal fluconazole, blood thinner heparin, anti-diarrhea drug loperamide, reflux medicine pantoprazole, and lung drug salbutamol.
