CCA: HIV/AIDS Initiative: Member Profile: Pfizer

Global HIV/AIDS Partnerships

For more than 30 years, through a strategic mix of free medicine distribution, training, education, mentoring and the building of medical infrastructures, Pfizer's Global Health initiatives and programs have helped improve and save lives worldwide.

Pfizer has stepped forward in partnership with governments and non-governmental organizations to develop a series of initiatives to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. and abroad. Pfizer's strategy is to partner with effective organizations already in place to offer results-oriented programs that will have a significant impact in preventing the spread of the disease and easing the health burdens of those who have been infected by the virus. This comprehensive, team-based approach combines the distribution of critical medicines with training, education, mentoring and the building of sound medical infrastructures. Pfizer's global health programs outlined on this page are as follows:

Infectious Disease Institute, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Global Health Fellows Program
The Diflucan Partnership
Collaboration with the Medical Education for South
African Blacks (MESAB)
Pfizer Foundation Grant Highlights
International Trachoma Initiative (ITI)
Pfizer and the UN Global Compact
A Prescription for Access - Spring 2004 Report

Infectious Disease Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda

Together with a global partnership of infectious disease experts, the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention and non-governmental organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Uganda, Pfizer is supporting efforts to develop new approaches to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic with the building of the Infectious Diseases Institute on the campus of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, site of one of the continent's leading medical schools.

The Infectious Disease Institute provides an advanced clinical setting for treating patients with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, and for training medical professionals from across Africa in the latest AIDS-specific treatment and prevention options. Those professionals are then tasked with transferring their knowledge to colleagues in their home
communities. It is an entirely free clinic, sponsoring clinical research to identify the best approaches to AIDS care. It has a fully functioning lab, capable of doing diagnostics for HIV/AIDS, opportunistic infections and sexually transmitted diseases. It is staffed by local clinicians and volunteers.

Learn more about Pfizer's partnership with Makerere Univeristy.

Global Health Fellows Program

First announced at the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona in 2002, the Global Health Fellows program will make up to 20 Pfizer colleagues available each year to support the work of leading NGOs like Doctors of the World, The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, American Jewish World Service, African Medical and Research Foundation, Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa and Health Volunteers Overseas.

In locations such as Kenya, Honduras, Uganda and Vietnam, Pfizer Global Health Fellows will fill vital roles to help reduce mother/child HIV transmission, improve workplace HIV/AIDS awareness, and provide prevention education for high-risk youth. The specific needs and positions have been identified by Pfizer’s NGO partners.

Pfizer has committed to fund transportation, lodging and other expenses for each Fellow, while maintaining their employment with Pfizer and preserving their position.

Learn more about Pfizer's Global Health Fellows Program

Read the Global Health Fellows press release

The Diflucan Partnership Program

Patients with advanced HIV infection are vulnerable to a variety of opportunistic infections (OIs) because of their weakened immune systems. These infections often become life-threatening, and are responsible for the main burden of illness and death in resource-poor countries with high prevalence of infectious disease. Pfizer's antifungal medicine Diflucan® (fluconazole) effectively treats two serious fungal opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDS: cryptococcal meningitis and esophageal candidiasis.

Recognizing Diflucan’s critical role in treating people living with AIDS, Pfizer created the Diflucan Partnership Program, a unique public-private partnership between Pfizer and ministries of health, local clinicians and nongovernmental organizations in the developing countries hit hardest by AIDS. Through the program, Pfizer began donating Diflucan in 2000, making it available to patients in need through government hospitals and nongovernmental organizations.

However, with a scarce supply of trained medical professionals in many of the hardest-hit areas of sub-Saharan Africa, simply donating medicine is not enough. The Diflucan Partnership Program also offers training, through the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, for healthcare providers in diagnosing and treating opportunistic infections. Other partners in the Diflucan Partnership Program include Axios International, a healthcare organization that is facilitating administration of the program; Interchurch Medical Assistance, which seeks to expand the program through the faith-based community; the International Dispensary Association, which handles distribution of Diflucan; and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Zimbabwe branch, which is tasked with expanding the program in that country.

As of March 2004, Pfizer has donated Diflucan to governments and NGOs operating at 915 sites in twenty-one countries with high prevalence of HIV/AIDS: Botswana, Cambodia, Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe. To ensure sustainability, the DPP has no dollar or time limits. Patients enrolled in the program will receive Diflucan for as long as they need it.

Learn more about Pfizer's Diflucan Partnership program

Collaboration with the Medical Education for South
African Blacks (MESAB)

Founded in 1985, well before the AIDS epidemic had begun to reach crisis proportions, MESAB is South Africa’s largest nongovernmental provider of medical scholarships. The organization’s purpose is to enable more people of color to be trained as physicians, and to date it has sent more than 3,000 black South Africans to the nation’s medical professional schools.

Pfizer has long taken the view that improving healthcare in developing nations requires not only access to medicines but improvements in basic healthcare infrastructure. For that reason, the company signed on as a founding sponsor for MESAB and has remained a staunch supporter ever since. Pfizer has contributed over $800,000 in funding to MESAB and directly sponsors scholarships for more than a dozen medical students annually. In addition, company executives have served continuously on MESAB’s board since the organization’s
inception.

Pfizer Foundation Grant Highlights

Pfizer's comprehensive approach to combating the HIV/AIDS crisis includes preventative education and outreach efforts to help people living with AIDS lead healthier and more productive lives. The following Global HIV/AIDS Programs partner with Pfizer and The Pfizer Foundation:

Doctors of the World
Support for the development of educational material to accompany the screenings of AIDS: The Global Epidemic in Perspective, a documentary that focuses on the stories of people living with HIV/AIDS in Brazil, India, Russia, Thailand and Uganda. The film was screened at the World AIDS Conference in Barcelona in July 2002.

Global Health Initiative
Support for an initiative by UNAIDS, the UN Foundation and the Government of Namibia to offer the private sector a tool that will allow potential donors to identify successful HIV/AIDS projects in Namibia.

The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Uganda
Support for a grant to expand the TASO Mulago clinical center in Kampala. The expanded center will allow TASO greater capacity to provide palliative care, counseling, medical care and social support to People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs). The Pfizer Foundation contributed $315,000, more than half the cost to expand the clinic, and TASO used the Pfizer Foundation grant as seed money in order to attract funds from other donors. Meanwhile, Pfizer has recently approved an additional $350,000 grant to fund construction of another TASO center in the western Ugandan region of Mbarara.

International Trachoma Initiative (ITI)

Founded jointly in 1998 by Pfizer and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, ITI aims
to fulfill the World Health Organization’s goal of eliminating trachoma by 2020 and has already reduced incidence of the disease in children under 10 by 90 percent in Morocco, where complete elimination is thought possible by 2005, and by 75 percent in Vietnam and Tanzania. These dramatic results include a reduction in acute infections in children by as much as 50 percent in some program areas.

Pfizer will continue to provide as much of its antibiotic Zithromax as is needed, as well as targeted financial support for as long as ITI programs show progress toward the elimination of blinding trachoma. In November 2003, the company made a commitment to expanding treatments with donations of Zithromax, from the current level of 10 million to 135 million doses over the next five years.

ITI currently also receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Starr Foundation, and other donors. ITI is active in Morocco, Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, Sudan, Niger, Nepal, Ethiopia and Vietnam, working in partnership with the private sector,UNagencies,NGOs and the national governments of those countries. ITI programs are expected to launch in Senegal and Mauritania in 2004.

Learn more about Pfizer's International Trachoma Initiative

Pfizer and the UN Global Compact

As a global company committed to good corporate citizenship, Pfizer signed the United Nations Global Compact in October 2002. The Global Compact is a network of UN agencies, corporations, governments, and labor and civil society organizations that endorse a shared set of nine principles on human rights, labor and the environment.

The Global Compact serves as a forum where diverse stakeholders can listen to each others’ viewpoints, learn from each other, and work together to develop sustainable solutions to the challenges that confront us all. Ultimately, the Global Compact is designed to engage business in becoming a systematic part of the solution to global social issues, leading to a more stable world. The Compact is a voluntary initiative that encourages businesses to be creative in
using their core skills to mainstream the nine principles into their activities around the
world.

Learn more about Pfizer's committment to the UN Global Compact

A Prescription for Access - Spring 2004 Report

Read more about how Pfizer is promoting access to medicines
in developing countries