AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2011

Delivering our strategy> As we expand our business in new geographies, we are exploringbroad market strategies to reach new patients, in particular theemerging middle income populations who are increasingly ableto access healthcare systems and for whom our medicines arebecoming affordable. You can read more about our efforts tobroaden access to our medicines in the Sales and Marketingsection from page 36.> The availability of medicines is not always the primary challenge.Access to healthcare also depends on having a functioninghealthcare system and the right allocation of resources to makesure that medicines are used appropriately as part of overall healthmanagement. For people in communities with limited healthcareinfrastructure we partner with others to help strengthen healthcareframeworks and capabilities.We have defined some common criteria to guide our commitmentand ensure that all our partnerships centre on delivering meaningfuland enduring benefit. The key principles are that our partnerships:> lead to positive, measurable outcomes in underservedcommunities> can be scaled up and potentially replicated to improve outcomesfor a greater number of people> deliver a sustainable framework that can ultimately be ownedand managed locally, without the need for our support.> On a broader basis, we collaborate at a global level to increaseunderstanding of fast-emerging and existing health threats in thedeveloping world, and to lend our skills and resources to addressingthese. For example:> In partnership with the IFPMA, AstraZeneca is undertaking policyresearch to understand practical steps to overcome the barriersto treatment and care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs)which are fast overtaking communicable diseases as adeveloping world health threat. The challenges that NCDs presentare not new to us. We have many decades of experience in NCDtreatment, with a strong product portfolio and pipeline of newmedicines targeting these areas. The majority of our researchinvestment continues to centre on NCDs.> Alongside the rising challenge of NCDs, the battle against TB andneglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is far from over. Scientists atour dedicated research facility in Bangalore, India are focused onfinding a new treatment for TB. For further information about this,see the Infection section from page 64. As outlined in theResearch and Development section from page 30, during 2011,we joined the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO)Re:Search initiative. This unprecedented collaboration betweenthe private sector and public partners will make publicly availablea searchable database of available IP assets and resources foruse in NTD research to speed the discovery and developmentof new potential treatments.Such partnerships can also contribute to our businessdevelopment, by enabling us to understand better the healthneeds of, and build important relationships in, markets of thefuture. An example is our Phakamisa initiative in South Africa(see page 55 for further information).We also partner with NGOs who are experienced at tacklingdisease at a community level. For example, we have beensupporting the British Red Cross since 2002 in their work to tackleTB and TB/HIV in Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and,more recently, in South Africa and Lesotho. To date, over 16,000people have been directly supported in completing their TBtreatment across all our partnership countries and TB mortalityand morbidity rates continue to fall in our partnership countries incentral Asia. Our partnership with the African Medical and ResearchFoundation (AMREF), created in 2007, centres on strengtheninghealthcare systems and integrating the management of malaria,HIV/AIDS and TB (MAT) programmes in Uganda, where there isa high burden of all three diseases. Progress to date includes sixlaboratories upgraded to Ministry of Health standards to supportimproved diagnosis and over one million patient visits recorded inthe Health Management Information System as having receivedMAT diagnostic, treatment and other services.Our most recent community investment, the AstraZeneca YoungHealth Programme (YHP) is designed to help young people in needaround the world deal with the health issues they face so they canimprove their chances of living a better life. We are working withexpert partners, Plan International and Johns Hopkins BloombergSchool of Public Health, to identify the needs in our local communitiesand to help address these needs with a combination of work on theground, research and advocacy. Adolescent health remains anunderserved part of the healthcare agenda and this global investmentinitiative aims to make a measurable and sustainable difference.YHP initiatives are now in place in nine countries and our target is15 by the end of 2012. By 2015, YHP will reach 500,000 youngpeople between the ages of 10 and 24 directly and will touch anadditional 500,000 lives indirectly.More information about our Access to healthcare strategyand the associated initiatives is available on our website,astrazeneca.com/responsibility.Human rightsAs we reshape our organisation, grow our business and increaseour outsourcing, we are working to make sure that humanrights continue to be appropriately integrated into our policiesand processes.AstraZeneca is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact(UNGC), a strategic public-private initiative for organisations committedto social and environmental sustainability. This means that we havecommitted to uphold 10 internationally recognised principles in theareas of human rights, labour standards, environmental sustainabilityand anti-corruption. These are long-standing principles for AstraZeneca(as described in our Code of Conduct and global policies) but beingpart of the UNGC reinforces how seriously we take these principles.It also gives us the framework for further developing our approach.In recent years, we participated in a project led by the Danish Institutefor Human Rights (DIHR), working with the pharmaceutical industryto develop a human rights assessment tool for pharmaceuticalcompanies, based on the DIHR’s existing Human Rights ComplianceTool. The first pharmaceutical industry version of the tool waslaunched in November 2010 and we used it to conduct a labourreview in 11 of our marketing companies, including some countrieswhere national labour standards are inconsistent with global bestpractice. The review focused on International Labour Organizationcore areas (freedom of association and collective bargaining, forcedand bonded labour, child labour, discrimination and working timeand wages).Building on the experience of this review, we adapted and simplifiedthe employment section of the assessment tool and, during theremainder of 2011, used it to conduct a labour review in every countrywhere AstraZeneca has employees.The results of all our 2011 reviews are currently being collated andanalysed to identify what we are doing well and where we may needto improve. Any areas identified for improvement will be included inour local people strategies in the relevant countries.52 Delivering our strategy Responsible BusinessAstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2011