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ABOUT THE POPULATION COUNCIL
Foundations: Making Contraceptives 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 ways of achieving this goal in which the Council has been uniquely successful is developing long-lasting but reversible contraceptives and making them available to women throughout the world who want and need them.
In fact, three of the four long-acting, reversible contraceptives for women available today were developed by the Council at its Center for Biomedical Research: the Copper T intrauterine device; the Norplant® subdermal implant system and its successor, Jadelle®; and Mirena®, the levonorgestrel hormone-releasing intrauterine system (IUS). More than 75 million women worldwide have relied on these products for family planning.
The Council aims to provide access to these contraceptives to all—rich and poor, in developed and developing countries. In licensing these products 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. Among the foundations that have been established to satisfy this requirement are:
The International Contraceptive Access Foundation
To meet the public-sector responsibilities included in its agreement with
the Council, Schering AG (which manages sales of the Mirena IUS outside of
the United States) and its Finnish subsidiary, Schering Oy (the manufacturer
of Mirena), have established the first foundation for the
specific purpose of supplying products at reduced prices internationally. The International Contraceptive Access Foundation, which began operations in 2004,
provides selected public-sector organizations with a specially packaged levonorgestrel IUS
at reduced prices to help serve the needs of poor women and families,
primarily in developing countries. The foundation is governed by an
international board of trustees representing public-sector agencies and the
international donor community as well as the Population Council and Schering
and has begun experimental programs in Latin America.
The ARCH Foundation
Under its Mirena contract, Berlex, Inc. (which is responsible for sales of
Mirena within the United States), established the not-for-profit ARCH
Foundation to assist low-income women in the United States who do not have
insurance coverage for the Mirena IUS. For those who meet the eligibility
criteria, the foundation provides Mirena free of charge. Assistance may also
be available for qualified patients who require removal of Mirena. The ARCH
Foundation has been in operation since 2002, is governed by a board of
trustees that includes several eminent practitioners and researchers in the
reproductive health field as well as representatives of the Population
Council and Berlex, and has served the needs of more than 25,000 women since
inception.
The Contraception Foundation
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals established the Contraception Foundation (formerly the
Norplant Foundation) under the terms of its agreement with the Population
Council to market Norplant in the United States. The foundation’s mission
was to improve the health and lives of women in the United States through
the support of education, health services, and family planning. The
foundation, which operated until early 2006, was governed by a board that
included eminent reproductive health practitioners and researchers as well
as representatives of public-sector agencies and the Council. The decision
to end the foundation's operations resulted from the withdrawal of the product
by its marketer.
In addition to its Norplant System (levonorgestrel implants) Removal Program, from 2003 to 2005 the foundation donated more than 2 million cycles of Alesse® (0.1 mg levonorgestrel/20 mcg ethinyl estradiol tablets) oral contraceptive clinic packs to a network of nonprofit agencies and clinics that distributed Alesse.
See Also
- "The Population Council joins forces with Schering to establish the International Contraceptive Access Foundation" (2004) (news release)
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