Partnership Fueling Progress on Millennium Development Goals

Sep 25, 2013 4:00 PM ET

LillyPad

Today's guest blog comes from Lilly's Vice President of Global Health Programs and Access, Dr. Evan Lee.

The 68th Session of the UN General Assembly is well underway, with a focus on accelerating progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These were established back in 2000 and set targets on health, education and other key development indicators to be achieved by 2015. We applaud this effort, and believe that it’s a great time to take stock of progress, and to look closely at the role of public-private partnerships in improving the health of the world’s poorest.

As our Chairman and CEO, John Lechleiter, wrote in Forbes.com last week, the pharmaceutical industry is engaged in 40 of these innovative partnerships targeting TB – a disease that kills 1.4 people each year, and an issue we’re passionate about. The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership, for example, is training healthcare professionals at the frontlines of the fight against deadly drug-resistant TB, and increasing access to treatments for the disease. Open-source research partnerships like the TB Drug Accelerator Program – supported by the Gates Foundation and driven by Lilly and six other leading pharmaceutical companies – are making progress toward more effective TB treatments that will us one step ahead of resistant strains.

Read more about organizations partnering together to make progress against deadly diseases.