In 1987, Merck founded the MECTIZAN Donation Program and announced that it would donate MECTIZAN for as long as necessary for the treatment and control of onchocerciasis (more commonly known as “river blindness”). At the inception of the program, the disease was one of the leading causes of preventable blindness worldwide, with approximately 130 million people at risk of getting the disease today. The program is a multi-sectoral partnership involving the WHO, the World Bank and UNICEF, as well as ministries of health, nongovernmental organizations and local communities is the longest-running disease-specific drug donation program and public-private partnership of its kind. With recent evidence from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicating the feasibility of eliminating the disease in Africa, the program’s strategy shifted from disease control to disease elimination, now working toward the goals established by the WHO to eliminate both lymphatic filariasis (LF) and onchocerciasis by 2020 and 2025, respectively. For more information on the MECTIZAN Donation Program, review the MDP Annual Highlights.
Merck has taken various approaches to combating HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis on local and regional levels. The Merck Foundation has committed $36 million USD in establishing the China-MSD HIV/AIDS Partnership (C-MAP) and in Papua New Guinea, Merck is a member of the Collaboration for Health in Papua New Guinea (CHPNG), which focuses on day care centers for those with the disease while providing training and education to healthcare workers to better treat and provide necessary support. Perhaps its most sustained commitment in one country has been its work in Botswana through the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership (ACHAP) to build the country’s HIV and tuberculosis prevention, care and treatment programs. Among many other contributions, ACHAP contributed to
• halving the infant mortality rate, saving over 50,000 lives between 2002 and 2007;
• dramatically reduced mother-to-child transmission and reduced new infections among children by at least 80 percent (from around 40 percent zero-conversion to less than 5 percent);
• substantially increased laboratory and treatment capacity and coverage across the country, including through training thousands of physicians and nurses;
• supported the development of Botswana’s First National Strategic Framework for HIV/AIDS (2003–2009) and the Second National Strategic Framework (2010–2016) as well as the country’s National Tuberculosis Strategy and TB/HIV policy guidelines;
• supported the launch of the TB Advocacy, Communication and Social Mobilization strategy which provided technical and financial support in the development of the training curriculum and in the Training of Trainees (TOTs) and other education and public awareness campaigns;
• a reduction of the national TB case notification rate from 623 per 100,000 persons in 2002 to 331 per 100,000 persons in 2012, likely attributed to the high coverage of ART in the country and high-impact TB interventions;
• increased data on proportion of tuberculosis patients with known HIV status, which has steadily increased from 68 percent in 2008 to 87 percent in 2012;
• increased coverage of co-trimoxazole prophylactic therapy from 32 percent in 2008 to 90 percent in 2012 for those TB patients co-infected with HIV, and the coverage of ART from 20 percent to 65 percent during the same period of time.
Merck has collaborated with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to provide access to its pediatric formulations of raltegravir for use in treating HIV-1 infections in infants and children. In providing the MPP a royalty-free license for the development of pediatric formulations of the drug, Merck has improved the access to raltegravir for pediatric populations in low-and middle-income countries with high rates of pediatric HIV, totaling 92 countries.