2003 ANNUAL REPORT
Making contraceptives widely available
For more than half a century, the Population Council has pursued the objective of giving people the means to choose whether and when to have children by meeting their needs for contraception. One of the approaches to this goal that the Council has been uniquely successful in pursuing is developing long-acting, reversible contraceptives and making them available to people throughout the world who want and need them.
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| (Left to right) Copper T intrauterine device, Norplant®, Jadelle®, Mirena® |
At its Center for Biomedical Research, the Council has developed three of the four long-acting, reversible contraceptives for women available today: the Copper T intrauterine device; the Norplant® subdermal implant system and its successor, Jadelle®; and Mirena®, the levonorgestrel hormone-releasing intrauterine system. More than 50 million women worldwide have relied on these products for family planning. The Council is now in the vanguard of research that may lead to new contraceptive options for men.
The Council aims to provide access to these contraceptives to all—rich and poor, in developed and developing countries. In licensing each new biomedical product to pharmaceutical companies for manufacturing and marketing, the Council always includes provisions for access to the products at reduced prices by public-sector organizations that make them available to the poor. A special public-sector price may be established, below the market price but above cost, or a charitable foundation may be created to donate the product.
In the United States, the pharmaceutical company Wyeth established the Contraception Foundation under the terms of its agreement to market Norplant, and Berlex, Inc. created the ARCH Foundation under its Mirena contract. These foundations help make the products available to women who could not otherwise afford them.
The manufacturer and marketer of Mirena outside the United States, Schering AG, has taken a novel approach to meeting its public-sector responsibilities by creating the International Contraceptive Access (ICA) Foundation. Under Schering’s agreement with the Council, the ICA Foundation will provide the product at reduced prices to public-sector agencies throughout the world, which will in turn provide them to women in the developing world. This foundation is the first established for the specific purpose of supplying products at reduced prices internationally. According to Population Council general counsel Patricia Vaughan, who helps negotiate these agreements, “It is hoped that this foundation will greatly enhance availability of this excellent method to women in the developing world.”
Sandra Arnold |
|  | Patricia Vaughan is |
