The pharmaceutical industry is generally regarded as a caricature of capitalism, an exploitive, soulless moneymaking machine that takes no prisoners. This is an industry that, despite being the foundation of our healthcare system by spending billions of dollars on research and drug development every year, ranks only slightly higher than the oil and tobacco industries in national popularity surveys. These are the companies who churn out bright packaging, who promise miracle cures to illnesses we didn’t even know existed while hushing up the harmful side effects. This is an industry that made a fortune off the nonexistent swine flue epidemic several years back.

Some of the biggest and guiltiest names in pharmaceuticals are GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co. and Pfizer. But here’s the catch – these very names have now set up generous donation programs to give drugs to developing countries. In particular, co-operation from these pharmaceutical powerhouses is key to plans for eliminating tropical diseases in Africa by 2020. But are the shady bad guys in our healthcare system merely exploiting the situation to revamp their image?

The main tropical diseases in Africa that lack almost all control are schistosomiases, STHDs (worms), lymphatic filariasis and trachoma. Lymphatic filariasis affects 40 million people. Trachoma and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are the reason why there are currently 5 million people who are blind in Africa. Together, tropical diseases claim millions of lives every year. And yet, the drugs to treat these diseases exist. They can be used to prevent and control these diseases and they can be used easily and cheaply.

The drug Praziquantel treats the tropical worm disease schistosomiasis. This disease takes 280,000 lives annually and currently 200 million people are affected. It was invented by the company German company Merck & Co. and came onto the market in 1988. The price was $4 per tablet. However, the countries that could afford Praziquantel weren’t particularly plagued with Schistosomiases. So the drug spent a good three decades stored in European warehouses until in 2008 some companies decided to start selling it for the reduced price of 7 cents per tablet. Then charities, dedicated to combating Schistosomiases, and governments in Africa were finally able to purchase the drug. One year later Merck&Co Inc decided to start donating it. By 2016, the donation of this company will be sufficient to treat and vaccinate 100 million people every year.

The other big pharmaceutical names have created their own donation programs. GlaxoSmithKline donated up to one billion tablets of Albendazole for lymphatic Filariasis and pledges to continue doing so until the disease is eliminated. Pfizer has committed to providing 120 million doses of Azithromycin against trachoma. These donations are important because most tropical diseases are so easily treated that they are easier to treat than diagnose. The most efficient and effective way to control these diseases and reduce the extremely high and unnecessary mortality rate will be by getting the maximum amount of the relevant drugs out there to treat as many people as possible.

The new donation programs of Big Pharma conflict with how we generally perceive the pharmaceutical industry. Four years before their first big donation of Praziquantel, Merck & Co. was forced to pay a fine of $900 million after the Vioxx scandal, where undeclared side effects were linked to 55,000 deaths by heart attack or stroke. Around the same time GlaxoSmithKline was fined $9 billion for bribing doctors to subscribe totally unsuitable anti-depressants for young children.

Obviously, it would be difficult to argue that the pharmaceutical brands are just terribly misunderstood. Even their donations can hardly be categorized at pure benevolent charity. If you check out the website of Merck & Co. you will find a vast number of sugar-coated pages about their donation programs that portray the programmes as proof of the saint like character of Big Pharma. But as mentioned before, a lot of these ‘gift’ drugs are simply not profitable in the West. To put it bluntly, they can either rot in storage or be given away for free.

The power and influence of these businesses comes from their dedication to dominating and manipulating the market with their brand name. Health is a personal and sensitive issue. We think and worry mostly about our own health and the health of people close to us. Therefore, the pharmaceutical business strategy for getting the consumer’s trust often focuses on manipulating our fears and mob-like insecurities about diseases that may affect us, and on building up relations to the sources that we deem reliable and safe.

In politics it is often said that nations underestimate ‘the power of being nice’ as an international relations strategy. Whatever their motivations may be, encouraging pharmaceutical companies to be nice is no bad thing.

The consumer determines market strategy. So if we spend less time stressing about swine flu and more time focusing on pragmatic solutions for real illnesses, hopefully this will trigger the start of more donation programmes. Because with cases like tropical diseases, the Big Pharma donations are a good thing, no matter what role they play in selling the pharmaceutical brand to the public as a whole.