The Gates Foundation and the Pan American Health Organization are both working on ways to make weight-loss drugs like Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s (NYSE:LLY) Mounjaro more accessible in lower-income countries, the global health groups told Reuters.
In separate interviews, Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates and PAHO director Dr Jarbas Barbosa said for the first time that their organizations were each seeking strategies to remedy the unequal availability of the highly effective but expensive treatments.
In response to a question about the treatments, Gates said his foundation would take any drug that was effective in high-income countries “and figure out how to make it super, super cheap so that it can get to everyone in the world”.
“We are starting the conversation,” Barbosa told Reuters, adding that PAHO is developing recommendations for how best to use the drugs and plans to speak to Novo, Lilly and generic drugmakers within the next couple of weeks.
