On November 1, 2019, the first shipment of treatment arrived at the hospital in Maputo, Mozambique. This is the first country Max Access Solutions, The Max Foundation’s patient-centered access model, has expanded into without a former access program in place.
“The Max Access Solutions provides hope in the form of innovative cancer treatment in neglected regions of the world,” says Pat Garcia-Gonzalez, CEO of The Max Foundation. “Today we reached a new frontier and I am deeply grateful to all who made it possible.”
In the beginning of 2018, Cathy Scheepers, The Max Foundation’s Region Head of Africa & Middle East visited the hospital in Maputo and learned of over 100 chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients who were unable to access treatment. The only way patients could access treatment was to travel to South Africa, a challenging day of travel. Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, and for the majority of people living there, traveling to find treatment was simply not an option.
“Over 100 patients who have had a five-year life expectancy now have access to live normal lives.” says Cathy. “We’re changing not only the physician and patient perspectives, but also the broader community perspective that cancer is not always a death sentence. There is hope if you have access to treatment.”
Thank you to all who made access to treatment in Mozambique a reality: the passionate donors, physicians in Maputo, Humanitarian PACT partner Novartis, advisors, and The Max Foundation’s global team members. Everyone involved worked tirelessly to expand the scope of Max Access Solutions into the hands of those awaiting treatment, and now, patients have the chance to spend more days with their families, communities, and loved ones.
The Max Foundation is a leading global health nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating health equity. For 28 years, Max has pioneered practical, scalable, high-quality solutions to bring life-extending treatments and patient-centered health care to more than 100,000 people living with cancer and critical illness in low- and middle-income countries. Max believes in a world where all people can access high-impact medicines, where geography is not destiny, and where everyone can strive for health with dignity and with hope.
Since the launch of Max Access Solutions in 2017, The Max Foundation has delivered over 10 million daily doses of cancer treatment to patients in more than 70 low- and middle-income countries.
In 2017 The Max Foundation, through its subsidiary MaxAid, and Novartis have renewed their commitment to patients by launching CMLPath to Care™ a new collaboration aimed at providing humanitarian access to treatment for CML and other rare cancers for those patients for whom no other form of local treatment access exists today. CMLPath to Care consists of humanitarian product donations and funding support from Novartis to Max, and an innovative new distribution model developed and implemented by Max and its international distributor, under the Max Access Solution umbrella.
The Max Foundation is pleased to announce a significant expansion of its collaboration with Pfizer to provide access to some of Pfizer’s innovative oncology portfolio to patients in low- and middle-income countries, which otherwise would have limited local access. The latest agreement increases the total number of patients benefitting from the program from 270 to 500 patients and adds Inlyta® (axitinib) an oral medicine used to treat advanced kidney cancer.
