AstraZeneca’s position in the top five companies in the Access to Medicine Index (ATMI) 2024 reflects our ambition to increase equitable and affordable patient access to life-changing treatments and strengthen health system resilience. ATMI is an independent ranking of 20 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and evaluates their efforts to improve access to medicine in low and middle-income countries. It focuses on three technical areas: Governance of Access; Research and Development (R&D); and Product Delivery.
We were ranked in fourth place in both Governance of Access and Product Delivery, where ATMI recognised a best practice in reporting outcomes for our access strategies across different countries' income classifications. We also fulfilled the criteria for ensuring continuous supply of our medicines and our health system strengthening initiatives were considered to meet all Good Practice Standards.
We performed well in R&D, with ATMI highlighting our access planning process particularly in emerging markets, and the largest pipeline for non-communicable diseases of companies in scope.
AstraZeneca moved from third overall in 2022 to fifth position in the latest Index, principally owing to changes in our portfolio related to vaccines. Our ongoing efforts to increase equitable access to healthcare were recognised with our highest overall ranking since before 2022.
At AstraZeneca, we are applying a health equity lens enterprise-wide to better understand how determinants of health contribute to poorer health outcomes among different communities in major disease areas, including cancer, chronic respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular and rare diseases. Working in partnership, we are designing tailored interventions that deliver care to patients who have been underserved by the health system to improve equitable and early disease detection, diagnosis and treatment.
For example, our Healthy Heart Africa programme, which had identified over 12.31 million people with elevated blood pressure and diagnosed over 4.991 million with high blood pressure by the end of September 2024. This initiative has recently expanded into addressing chronic kidney disease. Our Cancer Care Africa programme is another example of our commitment to putting patients first and improving equity and health system sustainability. Launched in November 2022 at COP27 in Egypt, Cancer Care Africa advocates for policy changes to improve outcomes for all individuals affected by the disease, and encourages the adoption of innovative health technologies to make cancer screening more accessible, especially in remote and underserved communities.
We are also focused on prevention, for example with our award-winning Young Health Programme (YHP) which partners with over 50 non-profit organisations to empower young people to make healthier choices. YHP has reached over 10 million young people since launch and is now active in 40 countries globally.
You can read more about our commitment to equitable access to healthcare on the Sustainability Access to healthcare pages on our website and in our 2024 Sustainability Impact Publication.
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Reference
1. AstraZeneca data on file: total programme numbers since start to end September 2024
Veeva ID: Z4-70422
Date of preparation: November 2024