The world’s drug giants make their billions by treating diseases of the rich, but these days pharmaceutical company executives are tripping over themselves to explain their mission to help the world’s poor.

At first glance, it makes little sense.

Conditions that kill millions of people in the developing world every year have long been ignored by Western firms, since medicines to fight them make no money.

Now, however, the emergence of a new kind of public-private partnership and the creation of novel funding institutions such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria may be moving the goalposts.

At the same time, companies know that the consumers of the future live in Asia, Latin America and Africa - and they want to do something about the industry’s rock-bottom image.

Earlier this month the non-profit group Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) unveiled its first commercial development success after linking with Sanofi-Aventis SA to bring a new anti-malaria pill to market in 2006.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc, meanwhile, is outlining its plans this week to work in partnership with various groups to develop new medicines for a range of tropical diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis.

Novartis AG has a new tropical disease research centre in Singapore, AstraZeneca Plc is working on tuberculosis in India and Pfizer Inc runs an infectious diseases institute in Uganda.

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

Bernard Pecoul, the executive director of DNDi, says the $500 billion-a-year industry’s new-found commitment to the developing world is encouraging, but efforts to date only scratch the surface of the problem.

According to DNDi, which was founded in 2003 by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, a mere 10 percent of health research resources go into diseases accounting for 90 percent of the global disease burden.

“Some companies have realised they have to do something on this topic but this is not going to change their basic commercial strategy,” Pecoul said.

Industry officials are more upbeat.

“Partnership is very important because different partners can provide different things,” said Federico Gomez de las Heras, director of GSK’s diseases of the developing world research unit in Spain. “We can provide our knowledge in drug discovery, our assets, as well as our human and economic resources.”

Advocates of the new partnership model argue that many promising drug candidates are discarded by companies for lack of a viable market but these “orphans” could be put to work within a non-profit group. It is a concept that dovetails with the industry’s need to improve its image, which AstraZeneca CEO Tom McKillop said last week was now on a par with that of the tobacco industry.

INVESTOR CRITICISM

Some big shareholders are worried, too, fearing that a lack of action in the developing world could ultimately hit profits if there is a political backlash or employees become disaffected.

Pecoul believes the message has hit home in boardrooms.

“Reputation is probably the first driving force. But a second important consideration is internal communication, because it’s important in a large company to motivate and stimulate staff,” he said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, a fierce critic of industry’s failure to do more to fight AIDS in Africa, remains sceptical.

Spokesman Daniel Berman said there had been progress in some areas, particularly malaria, where a number of new drugs are now nearing the market, offering an alternative to older treatments to which the mosquito-borne parasite has developed resistance.

But he questions how far industry will share its know-how, especially if it involves a promising drug candidate that may also have a role in treating a commercially attractive disease.

“There are some examples of success out there, but the negative side effect is that this provides a PR cover for companies,” he said.