Our Impact
Dear friends and colleagues,
The mission of the Coalition is to improve global access to NCD medicines and products, in alignment with WHO’s target of 80% availability of affordable basic technologies and essential medicines required to treat major NCDs. To achieve this, the Coalition works collaboratively across four different workstreams – supply chain strengthening, capacity building, finance & costing, and advocacy. Our workstream activities are led and supported by the deep technical, advocacy, and policy perspectives brought to the table by our multisectoral membership and members of our technical advisory committee and technical working group members.
Since the launch of the Coalition in 2017, we have provided technical and advocacy expertise for individual countries, for the East Africa region, and at the global level through our membership. We have initiated activities to address supply chain security, to understand costs of delivering medicines and products, promote rationale use of NCD medicines and products, and reduce barriers that impacting availability and affordability of medicines and products. Highlights of work done to date can be found here.
We believe that access to NCD medicines and products is a fundamental human right and we have much work to do – especially as health systems continue to respond to the current COVID-19 crisis. We need to ensure that the voices of those living with NCDs are heard, that their needs are being met, and that our efforts strengthen health systems around the world and make them more resilient and dependable today, tomorrow, and in the future for those living with NCDS.
Please contact us through this website if you are interested in learning more! And consider joining us if you agree with our mission. We seek engagements from governments, private-sector entities, academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, and international business associations interested in, and willing to, commit to actions to improve availability of affordable NCD medicines and health products.
With gratitude,
Jean Claude Mbanya & Rachel Nugent (Former Steering Committee Co-Chairs)
Member Activity Highlights
Members of the Coalition share a common focus on NCDs and improving access to NCD products and medicines for those living with NCDs globally. Learn more about what our Members are doing, around the world, to impact patient’s lives.
Access Accelerated
Access Accelerated unites more than 20 individual member companies and five implementing partners – City Cancer Challenge, NCD Alliance, PATH, the World Bank Group and the World Heart Federation – to create a global network dedicated to accelerated progress on NCDs. Together, we are driving sustainable solutions at scale that address locally defined priorities and deliver on our vision of a future where all people have access to quality NCD prevention, treatment and care. This has lead to many achievements, notably the following:
- Our partnership with the World Bank has catalyzed a scale up of funding for NCDs, with the World Bank now leading a $5.5 billion dollar NCD portfolio active in 33 countries.
- In 2019, we began work with PATH and the Ministry of Health in Vietnam to scale a successful hypertension prevention and management pilot that ran from 2016 – 2018, to reach all of Vietnam and to include diabetes and eventually other NCDs.
- A national Cancer Law was enacted in Paraguay in 2019, a milestone resulting from City Cancer Challenge (C/Can) efforts to bring together public and private sector partners to make cancer a national priority.
Access to Medicine Foundation
The Access to Medicine Foundation is an independent non-profit organisation which has been working for more than ten years to stimulate and guide the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to improve access to medicine in low- and middle- income countries. We use a three-part model for change: (1) build multi-stakeholder consensus on the industry’s responsibilities, (2) stimulate pharmaceutical companies to compete to ‘do well’ and (3) share best practices, spurring collaboration. Our main product, the Access to Medicine Index, has included non-communicable diseases since 2010. An independent assessment of our impact found that it “has made commendable contributions towards advancing the engagement of the pharmaceutical industry with the issue of access to medicine” and that the Access to Medicine Index acts as “a catalyst for accelerating ongoing access-to-medicine activities and as an inspiration for development of new activities.”
International Society of Hypertension
Established in 1966, the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) is a worldwide non-profit scientific organization dedicated to scientific innovation, education, and advances in medical care in the field of hypertension. ISH efforts to combat the threat of hypertension include May Measurement Month, a global blood pressure screening and awareness initiative involving more than 100 countries. ISH is also a key partner in several educational initiatives such as “Hypertension Summer School”, the Indian Certificate Course in Management of Hypertension, and the Fundamentals for Implementing a Hypertension Program in Resource-Constrained Settings online course hosted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The recently released “ISH 2020 Global Hypertension Practice Guidelines” are the first guidelines developed specifically for the management of hypertension in all regions of the world, regardless of population or resources.
PATH
PATH is a global organization that accelerates health equity by bringing together public institutions, businesses, social enterprises, and communities to solve the world’s most pressing health challenges. Through partnerships and collaborations with MOHs, PATH has been working in NCDs for more than 20 years, starting with work in breast and cervical cancer and expanding to diabetes and cardiovascular risk in 2012. PATH’s NCD Program’s focus areas include: 1) Strengthening primary health care to reach people where they live with awareness, screening, early diagnosis, and treatment; 2) NCD prevention through school health and workplace wellness; 3) Implementation of digital solutions and innovative models of service delivery including engagement of community health workers, social enterprises, and private-sector partnerships; 4) Awareness raising and interventions at the national, regional, and global levels toward ensuring continuous access to high-quality medicines and health products for NCD care.
In 2014 PATH and the health ministries in Kenya and Senegal collaborated on the No Empty Shelves project, funded by Novo Nordisk. This effort strengthened the global evidence base on the availability of affordable essential medicines and products for diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); raised awareness of major barriers to the availability of NCD medicines and technologies; and built a network of global and national stakeholders committed to taking action to increase the availability of affordable essential medicines and technologies (EMTs) for NCDs. No Empty Shelves included two studies to assess the availability, affordability, and supply chain bottlenecks that influence access to medicines and products for people living with NCDs. This work included gathering local evidence from 120 facilities and 110 stakeholder interviews and led to heightened priority and action. Advocacy workshops were held in both countries to establish strategies based on project evidence to influence policy enabling supply security. Additionally, as a result of this work and local efforts in Kenya, statins were added to the national essential medicines list and the Supply Chain Technical Working Group (TWG) was conceptualized. In Senegal, a public-private coalition called ACT NOW was launched to serve as a partner with the country’s health authorities to mobilize resources, improve training, and raise awareness in the fight against chronic diseases. Finally, this work provided the foundation for the creation and launch of the multisectoral Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines and Products.
In 2019, PATH, in partnership with Access Accelerated, began conducting an end to end NCD supply chain study (“Journey of the Pill”) in 7 counties in Kenya and 6 districts in Ghana that includes public, private, and faith-based supply chains from importation to the point of access for the persons living with NCDs. PATH is working closely with the Ministry of Health in both countries to test innovations that address documented barriers which impact access to NCD medicines and products. The results of this study will also inform the work of the Coalition, as we strive to address access issues in Kenya. Results will be released in late 2020.
Through PATH’s NCD Program, as well as their role as the Secretariat for the Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines and Products, PATH is committed to advancing health equity through innovation and partnerships and improving access to NCD prevention and care where they are needed most.
World Heart Federation
The World Heart Federation (WHF) is the principal representative body for the global cardiovascular community, representing more than 200 heart foundations, scientific societies, civil society and patient organizations from over 100 countries. Together with our Members, we are working to end needless deaths and build global commitment for improved cardiovascular health at the global, regional, national and community levels. Globally, we are convening leaders and innovators who drive action for cardiovascular health at our annual Global Summit on Circulatory Health; in 2018, the Global Summit explored the theme of access to essential medicines and resulted in a position paper on Improving Access to Essential Medicines for Circulatory Diseases. Nationally, in Kenya for example, we work with our member the Kenya Cardiac Society and in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Access Accelerated to implement the National Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Guidelines and train 2,000 health workers to better prevent, diagnose and manage CVD.
WHF is also actively involved in advocating for fiscal policies for health. To facilitate high-level dialogue around this crucial topic, we commissioned a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit to examine attitudes and beliefs of Ministries of Finance – those instrumental in creating and adopting these policies – towards taxing unhealthy commodities to help fund health priorities, such as Universal Health Coverage. The resulting publication, Healthy Budgets, Healthy People, explores the beliefs and attitudes of senior finance ministry officials on every aspect of tobacco taxation, including its purpose, setting of appropriate rates, illicit trade, enforcement and implications for spending possibilities, including financing universal health coverage.