A Drug Company and the Poor

The New York Times profiles GlaxoSmithKline's Andrew Witty, particularly focusing on his efforts to help the poor. Witty has promised to limit the price of GSK drugs in poor countries to no more than 25 percent of what they charge in wealthy nations and to donate one-fifth of the profits from poor countries to build up their healthcare systems. Witty, of course, has his detractors. Daniel Berman, who began the Doctors Without Borders' Access Campaign says that moving vaccine technology to middle-income countries was "still a lot of smoke and mirrors" and that GSK's malaria-focused lab in Spain "still doesn't have a big enough budget to make a difference." Witty has won over others, including Oxfam's Sophia Tickell. "I'm in charge of an organization that can actually make a difference for people in the third world, and I am not going to be the person who, after X years, sits back and says, 'Oh, I wish I'd done more,'" Witty says.