Novartis to keep making malaria drugs if orders dry up amid aid cuts

Novartis commits to producing malaria and leprosy medicines despite global health funding cuts, emphasizing need over demand.

Swiss drugmaker Novartis will keep making medicines for malaria and leprosy, even if it does not get orders as normal amid the global health funding crunch, its president of global health told Reuters in an interview.

The company makes 28 million malaria treatment courses every year, and sells almost all of them a not-for-profit price to countries and groups including the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), a U.S.-government funded initiative that still has an unclear future given President Donald President Trump's vast international aid cuts, although it did receive an exemption for some work earlier this year because of its lifesaving potential.

"We are not going to be the bottleneck," said Lutz Hegemann, president, Global Health and Sustainability, Novartis, in an interview. "We are not going to produce based on demand, because we know that these medicines are needed, and we need to be creative in finding ways to get them from the factory to patients."

Earlier this year, an order was cancelled by a contractor for PMI when it got a stop-work order from the U.S. government, Dr. Hegemann said. But then within a month it got an exception and asked for work to begin again.

"You cannot do that essentially in real-time. We remain committed to our volume," said Dr. Hegemann, adding that this also applied for leprosy, which it donates in smaller quantities through the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is the biggest buyer of Novartis' antimalarials. It has not yet faced cuts but is fundraising now for its future work in a difficult climate.

Speaking in London, Hegemann also urged the pharmaceutical sector to step up while governments, including the U.S., United Kingdom and France, pull back from aid funding, and particularly work more directly with governments that have traditionally been recipients of aid.