GSK makes a vital contribution to improving healthcare in the developing world in three key areas: supplying antiretrovirals and anti-malarials at not for profit prices and vaccines at significant discounts; investing in R&D that targets diseases affecting the developing world; and community investment activities and partnerships that support better healthcare in under-served communities.

In 2003, GSK's global community investment was £338 million for programmes focused on health and education in over 100 countries.

In 2003, GSK donated medicines such as antibiotics valued at £105 million to support relief efforts in over 80 countries, working with NGO partners like Project HOPE, AmeriCares, MAP International and InterChurch Medical Assistance.

GSK's Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education (PHASE) is a simple handwashing education programme that is reducing diarrhoea-related disease and deaths in school children in Kenya, Nicaragua, Peru and Zambia. The programme was developed in partnership with PLAN International, AMREF and the Ministry of Education in Zambia.

In 2003, GSK extended the voluntary licence granted to Aspen Pharmacare, sub-Saharan Africa's largest generics company, for the manufacture and sale of the ARVs Combivir , Epivir and Retrovir . The licence, which was originally granted in October 2001, previously was limited to only the public sector in South Africa and Zimbabwe. GSK has now extended the licence to cover both the public and private sectors across all of sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2003, GSK Biologicals launched a new meningitis vaccine developed especially for Africa, in collaboration with the WHO. Then WHO Director General, Gro Harlem Brundtland, in welcoming the vaccine said, " The record time in which we've come up with a vaccine and are making it available to those who need it is a testament to the fact that public-private partnerships can work for the betterment of health. "

GSK is developing a vaccine to combat rotavirus infection worldwide. This vaccine is being developed in the developing world, where the medical need is the greatest, and GSK intends to launch it there first before the end of 2004. In order to make the vaccine rapidly available, particularly in Africa and Asia, the company has engaged in a partnership with a number of public health institutions in both the developed and developing world to undertake accelerated development in those regions.

In January 2004, GSK Bio announced the start of a Phase I clinical trial designed to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of a novel, proprietary prophylactic vaccine being developed to induce protection against tuberculosis. The trial is the first time that this novel TB vaccine will be tested in man. The vaccine is developed in collaboration with Corixa. NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, MD. said, "This is the first recombinant tuberculosis vaccine to reach human trials in the United States. Indeed, this is the first new TB vaccine to be tested in our country in more than 60 years. This candidate vaccine, as well as other novel products emerging from the TB research and development pipeline, offers hope for reducing the burden of a disease that claims approximately 2 million lives each year."

A dedicated group, based in the UK and Spain, has been created within GSK's pharmaceutical R&D organisation to ensure a focus on diseases of the developing world (DDW). For this group, drug development projects are prioritised primarily on their socio-economic and public health benefits rather than their commercial returns.

In conjunction with other partners, GSK continues to support 27 clinical trials in developing countries, including 20 in Africa. The purpose of these trials is to assess the use of ARVs for treatment and prevention, including mother-to-child transmission, in resource poor settings. In total some 16,500 patients form, or will form, part of these HIV collaborative studies in these regions.

GSK is working with Yunnan Provincial Health Bureau in Kunming and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre (ADARC) on the largest HIV clinical study in China to date. GSK will provide the Trizivir tablets necessary for the three-year study.

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