Novartis reinforces its commitment to health equity with access and affordability strategies throughout the country

One of the main challenges in Mexico is the fight for equity in access and affordability in health.

For the past 20 years, Novartis has been part of the solution to the primary health challenges in Mexico and the world with critical strategies to impact the most vulnerable communities positively. For the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), equity in health is a fundamental component of social justice that indicates the absence of avoidable, unjust, or remediable differences between groups of people due to their social, economic, demographic, or geographic circumstances.

As established by PAHO, equity is the struggle for impartiality and justice through eliminating unnecessary and avoidable differences, which are not the result of biological differences but are the result of social and economic processes that create inequalities in access to health. Therefore, it is essential to have sustainable access and affordability strategies that focus on equity.

Novartis has a long history of being part of the solution to significant global health challenges, including health equity. Over the last twenty years, Novartis has moved from primarily donation-based initiatives toward models with more sustainable social impact to reach the most vulnerable and socially disadvantaged communities.

“These health equity strategies contemplate working hand in hand with the government, civil society organizations, and other private actors to strengthen health systems, setting the price of medicines responsibly-based on the value they provide to consumers. Patients”, commented Fernando Cruz, General Director of Corporate Affairs and Communication of Novartis Mexico. He added that “to achieve this, tiered prices, innovative business models, patient assistance programs and affordable and quality generic and biosimilar. Solutions are contemplated through the Sandoz Division.”

It should be noted that Novartis Mexico, through our two Innovative Medicines divisions: Pharma and Onco, as well as its generics and biosimilars division, Sandoz, achieved a high social impact of medicines in 2020, reaching 2.3 million patients (1.1 million patients in 62 brands and more than 1.2 million patients in Sandoz products) and in 2021 it reached 3.1 million patients (1.2 million patients in Innovative Medicines and 2 million in Sandoz products).