Swiss firm Novartis has taken the top spot in the Access to Medicine Index for the first time, but progress by the pharmaceutical industry as a whole in making medicine available in the poorest countries has been sluggish since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Novartis edged out UK-based firm GSK, which has held the top spot since 2008, when the index was first published. Novartis moved up from fourth place in the previous index in 2022. The other Swiss company in the index, Roche, dropped one spot to 11th. Despite “modest progress” by the world’s largest companies, the Netherlands-based non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation, which compiles the biennial index of drug companies, warned that the pace of progress falls far short of what is needed to address global health inequities. Nearly two billion people globally have no access to essential medicines, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report from 2019. This is largely because medicine is not affordable, available ...
