Word: vasella
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Almost from the get-go, however, Coartem's high $2.40-a-dose price tag was criticized by public-health officials and activists. Dr. Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, says the company realized it was pointless to try to sell a medication to people who couldn't afford it. So in 2001 the company signed an agreement with the World Health Organization to bring the price down to $1 per dose, or just about the cost of making it. Then the drugmaker went one step further, slashing that price again, to 80 cents - in other words, taking a 20% loss. Meanwhile...
Making the product cheaply available isn't the whole answer. Distribution - which is largely the job of health officials and NGOs - has proved particularly difficult. The problem lies in how to successfully monitor the supply chain while still minimizing costs, and so far, no good solution has been found. Vasella recalls visiting a Catholic mission in a Tanzanian village recently and finding that the nuns there were still paying $1 per dose. "We have all the intermediaries marking up the price dramatically," he says. "We've heard reports of some charging as high as $8 a dose to get Coartem...
...drugmakers have found some allies in the Chinese courts. Pfizer won a landmark trademark-infringement case in October when a Chinese court ordered a domestic company to stop using Pfizer's logo on its website and fined the offender $25,000. Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella, for one, cites China's "enlightened" patent laws as the reason the Swiss drugmaker will continue to invest in China vs. India, where a court recently rejected the company's attempt to protect a patent on a leukemia drug. "China has made tremendous progress and taken the steps to show they have the right priorities...
...years ago, Dr. Daniel Vasella, the Swiss CEO of pharmaceutical giant Novartis, told an American interviewer that his firm was going to have to spend a lot more time talking to NGOs. The journalist's response: "What's an NGO?" Let's hope he knows now. NGOs--nongovernmental organizations--have won significant influence over global companies. The demonstrations against global capitalism at the G-8 summit in Genoa were the latest manifestation of a trend that--mostly quietly and behind the scenes--is defining our age. From Home Depot (criticized for its use of tropical hardwoods) to Starbucks (attacked...
KNOW WHOM YOU ARE TALKING TO. Vasella divides organizations into those that genuinely want a dialogue with his drug company--he mentions the famine-relief group Oxfam--and those, like many animal-rights activists, that don't. "Don't try to convert the unconvertible," he counsels. Talk to the "decent people" who respect different points of view. From the other side, Charles Secrett, executive director of Friends of the Earth UK, concedes that some activists believe talking to corporations is a sellout and only violent revolution will change the world...