A new agreement will expand access to Pfizer’s contraceptive, Sayana Press, for Women Most in Need in the World’s Poorest Countries. But there's more to story.
Per the Pfizer press release, “Collaboration will help advance progress and support global efforts to increase access to voluntary family planning information, services and contraceptives by 2020.”
Together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Pfizer has announced an agreement to expand access to it’s injectable contraceptive, Sayana Press (medroxyprogesterone acetate), for women most in need in 69 of the world’s poorest countries. Sayana Press will be sold for $1 per dose to qualified purchasers, who can help enable the poorest women in these countries to have access to the contraceptive at reduced or no cost.
John Young, President, Pfizer Global Established Pharma Business: “This is a great example of applying innovation to a Pfizer heritage product to help broaden access to family planning, Pfizer saw an opportunity to address the needs of women living in hard-to-reach areas, and specifically enhanced the product’s technology with public health in mind.””
The Pfizer/Gates/CIFF effort is a result of the July 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, which set an ambitious and achievable goal of providing an additional 120 million women in the world’s 69 poorest countries with access to voluntary family planning information and services by 2020.
John Young, “I’m so pleased with the leadership from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and other collaborating organizations that are helping create a sustainable market through an approach that could be a model for other medicines.”
Bravo for Pfizer and partners. But the bigger story here is the creative redesign of legacy products for use in the developing world at low or no cost with NGO and other non-industry collaborators. It’s a model worth deeper investigation and broader implementation. Innovation comes in many forms.
