In 2019, we established a dedicated organization to reach more patients in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which is home to the largest underserved population in the world. While many African countries have made remarkable progress in preventing childhood mortality, the continent faces the double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Although 25% of the global disease burden is in Africa, it only accounts for 3% of the world’s health workers and the share of the world’s health expenditure for Africa is below 1%.1
This is why the Novartis SSA aspiration is bold and ambitious: to deliver high-value medicines that alleviate society's greatest disease burdens through innovative, sustainable business models, and novel access approaches. We are reinforcing our commitment to patients in SSA by driving access to innovation and supporting the growth of the healthcare systems we serve by:
- Improving patient access to life-changing medicines, focused on three therapeutic areas – cardiometabolic, neuroscience and ophthalmology – and specialty medicines and programs on malaria, sickle cell disease, oncology and transplant.
- Focusing on countries where we can deliver the greatest impact.
- Unleashing the power of our people to empower our teams to outperform.
Geographically, the region is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, grouping the 46 countries that make up SSA into three distinct clusters: East and Southern Africa (ESA), Francophone West Africa (FWA), and Anglophone West Africa (AWA).