GlaxoSmithKline's VP, Dr. Gunther Faber, addresses London Business School – Africa Club

Last week, Dr. Gunther Faber, VP GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Africa, addressed the London Business School 's Africa Club. He gave an insightful overview of the current state of healthcare on the continent, highlighting key challenges and GSK future role.

Africa represents 10% of the world population but only 0.3% of global Rx market, with healthcare spends ranging from $1 to $520 per capita and more than 25m people with HIV/AIDS. Surprisingly, more than 2m children under five die from malaria each year – one child every thirty seconds .

Poverty remains the single biggest barrier to improving healthcare but there are other key challenges that include counterfeiting, and lack of capacity and infrastructure resulting in low drug usage .

According to the Food and Drug Administration on the USA worldwide sales of fake drugs exceeds US$3.5 billion per year and this number is estimated to exceed US$75 billion by 2010. Africans, in particular, fall prey to these cheap drugs with sometimes fatal consequences. Dr. Faber, illustrated examples of these counterfeits that are indistinguishable in packaging from the real drug and contain no active ingredients.

In addition, lack of capacity and poor infrastructure limits the distribution of these drugs especially in rural areas. Appropriate infrastructure development and preferentially priced products needs to be developed to improve the healthcare. GSK is in the process of evaluating a new strategy that aims to develop an alternative financially sound business model, which if implemented, could see many more people in Africa able to access high quality, safe medicine .

Amongst others pharma companies, GSK has also been working on a vaccine for HIV and Malaria. The malaria vaccine for children is planned to launch in 2012. Dr. Faber highlighted other vaccine preventable diseases that GSK is targeting for Africa . These include TB, cervical cancer, rotavirus, meningitis and pneumonia.

Least Developed countries (LDC's) in Africa relies on key financial supporters, such as GAVI Alliance, EDF, Advanced Market Commitment, Global Fund and Pepfar. Special credit goes to the Gates Foundation for working to transform healthcare on the continent.

Africa 's problems are great but what is greater is the spirit of the African people to look to the future with optimism and to persevere.