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Viatris 2023 Sustainability Report: Addressing Critical Health and Social Needs in India

VTRS | October 15, 2024

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / October 15, 2024 / With a large footprint in India, Viatris has a broad program supporting communities there. We focus on a variety of health, education and community welfare initiatives including health awareness and screening programs, health workers and capacity building, constructing school buildings and sanitation facilities, promoting organic farming and improving access to clean, healthy water.

In 2023, our work included:

Continuing to support Akshaya Vidya, a supplementary education program that encourages underprivileged children to continue their educations through evening classes offered at 40 neighborhood locations
Developing a watershed in Ranga Reddy District to enhance the availability of groundwater and increase agricultural productivity that promotes resilience for agriculture, livestock and food security
Partnering with the Sportz Village Foundation in Hyderabad to promote fitness among children as a way to improve physical and mental health, improve attendance in schools and encourage students to participate in sports

Removing Barriers to Care to Fight India's Growing Cancer Burden

More than 1 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed in India every year. Of the more than 1 billion people who live in the vast country, 64% are in rural communities, where many are too far from and unable to afford treatment at the country's few urban cancer centers.1

To address the growing cancer burden in India, Viatris and Tata Memorial Center, launched a collaboration in 2015 on a multipronged approach to remove barriers to diagnosis, treatment and care. More than 8 million people have been screened for oral cancer under the Access to Affordable Cancer Care for One and All program, which also aims to build healthcare capacity and technical support for early detection, screening, prevention and treatment of cancer. The program has been such a success that what started in just six districts of Maharashtra has now been scaled to all 34 districts in Maharashtra and level to six states - and continues to grow.

Through the program, specialized training for physicians, nurses, technicians and health workers is provided so they can diagnose and manage cancer cases within their local communities, decentralizing cancer care and supporting early diagnosis for patients. Protocols for screening for the most common cancers in India - oral, breast and cervical cancers - were also developed, enabling early detection. These protocols were implemented through screening and awareness programs conducted at the district level across the state.

Improving Liver Health in India

India's Healthy Liver Healthy Delhi program, sponsored by Viatris, addresses the increasing incidents of liver diseases in the country. As many as 40 million people in India are living with hepatitis B and as many as 12 million with hepatitis C.2

The program provides a state-of-the-art mobile unit that offers liver health check-ups, screenings for hepatitis B and C, and general public awareness of liver diseases and treatments. The unit is able to operate six days a week, with as many as 40 people screened each day. The program began in 2017, and has resulted in more than 30,000 screenings to date.

Sources
1 World Cancer Day 2024: Addressing Cancer Care in India
2 WHO Hepatitis Fact Sheet

Supporting Farmers in India Adopt Sustainable Agricultural Practices

Decades of reliance on chemical fertilizers and other agents used improperly, the growing impacts of climate change and the economic impacts of urbanization, among other pressures, have led to poor soil quality, pest infestations and lower yields.1

The problems are repeated across India, where about 70% of the country's rural households depend primarily on agriculture for their llivelihoods. About 82% of the country's farmers operate small or marginal farms with less than two hectares of land.

To help these small farms survive, Viatris is supporting a pilot project in India in Anneswara Gramapanchayath to teach farmers about more sustainable ways of working. The project with Adarsha Rural Health and Economic Development Society (ARHEDS) includes strengthening farmer education and training programs, promoting the availability and affordability of organic materials, streamlining certification processes, enhancing market infrastructure, and providing financial incentives and support for organic farmers.

The program aims to address the barriers that currently prevent farmers in India from adopting organic practices. These barriers include limited access to organic materials like organic manure and biofertilizers; a lack of knowledge and capacity in organic pest and disease management; the difficulty for small-scale farmers to obtain organic certification; a lack of robust supply chains and market infrastructure to help organic farmers connect with consumers and fetch fair prices; and the challenges that come with scaling up organic farming

If the project is successful, the intention is to scale it in order to empower more local farmers.

Community Programs Addressing TB in India

A quarter of the world's TB cases can be found in India.2 The chronic infectious disease is a leading cause of death in people living with HIV and also a major contributor to AMR. In India, the government has set a goal to end TB by 2025, and in addition to our core business of scaling access to treatment, Viatris is working in communities to address the burdens of TB in three unique ways.

In partnership with the Society For Education Action Research in Community Health (SEARCH), we are working to control TB in rural and tribal areas of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. The program, which was launched in 2023, aims to mitigate TB incidence, reduce complications and lower mortality rates in these communities through awareness campaigns tailored to local languages, house-to-house screenings conducted by trained health workers, sputum collection and microscopy for diagnosis, and counseling sessions following national guidelines.

A second program addresses the significance of nutrition for TB patients, something the government of India drives as a priority to improve treatment outcomes for TB patients. Working with Doctors For You (DFY), Viatris is providing nutritional support to about 1,050 people living with TB in Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Bihar and Odisha. This includes conducting nutritional assessments, providing education, leveraging public distribution systems, distributing monthly nutrition kits, and assessing the impact of nutrition interventions.

We are also working to strengthen the connection between diagnosis and treatment for people living with drug-resistant TB (DRTB) in Agra district of Uttar Pradesh. Together with our partner Foundation for Innovative New Diagnosis (FIND), we are working to enhance the diagnosis of DRTB and address the challenge of locating undiagnosed patients in high TB burden areas of Uttar Pradesh.

In 2023, more than 80,000 people in India benefited from Viatris' work to address TB.

SOURCES
1UN India At a Glance
2 WHO Global Tuberculosis Report

View the full 2023 Sustainability Report.